#how can anyone think getting destiel content into the show was ever easy? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

angelsdean · 5 months

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I need people to understand how S&P (standards and practices) works in television and how much influence they have over what gets to stay IN an episode of a show and how the big time network execs are the ones holding the purse strings and making final decisions on a show's content, not the writers / showrunners / creatives involved.

So many creators have shared S&P notes over the years of the wild and nonsensical things networks wanted them to omit / change / forbid. Most famously on tumblr, I've seen it so many times, is the notes from Gravity Falls. But here's a post compiling a bunch of particularly bad ones from various networks too. Do you see the things they're asking to be changed / cut ?

Now imagine, anything you want to get into your show and actually air has to get through S&P and the network execs. A lot of creators have had to resort to underhanded methods. A lot of creators have had to relegate things to subtext and innuendo and scenes that are "open to interpretation" instead of explicit in meaning. Things have had to be coded and symbolized. And they're relying on their audience to be good readers, good at media literacy, to notice and get it. This stuff isn't the ramblings of conspiracy theorists, it's the true practices creatives have had to use to be able to tell diverse stories for ages. The Hays Code is pretty well known, it exists because of censorship. It was a way to symbolize certain things and get past censors.

Queercoding, in particular, has been used for ages in both visual media and literature do signal to queer audiences that yes, this character is one of us, but no, we can't be explicit about it because TPTB won't allow it. It's a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to those in the know. It's the deliberate use of certain queer imagery / clothing / mannerisms / phrases / references to other queer media / subtle glances and lingering touches. Things that offer plausible deniability and can be explained away or go unnoticed by straight audiences to get past those network censors. But that queer viewers WILL (hopefully) pick up on.

Because, unfortunately, still to this day, a lot of antiquated network execs don't think queer narratives are profitable. They don't think they'll appeal to general audiences, because that's what matters, whatever appeals to most of the audience demographic so they can keep watching and keep making the network more money. The networks don't care about telling good stories! Most of them are old white cishet business men, not creatives. They don't care about character arcs and what will make fans happy. They don't care about storytelling. What they care about is profit and they're basing their ideas of what's profitable on what they believe is the predominate target demographic, usually white cis heterosexual audiences.

So, imagine a show that started airing in the early 2000s. Imagine a show where the two main characters are based on two characters from a famous Beat Generation novel, where one of the characters is queer! based on a real like bisexual man! The creator is aware of this, most definitely. And sure, it's 2005, there's no way they were thinking of making that explicit about Dean in the text because it just wouldn't fly back then to have a main character be queer. But! it's made subtext. And there are nods to that queerness placed in the text. Things that are open to interpretation. Things that are drenched in metaphor (looking at you 1x06 Skin "I know I'm a freak" "maybe this thing was born human but was different...hated. Until he learned to become someone else.") Things that are blink-and-you-miss-it and left to plausible deniability (things like seemingly spending an hour in the men's bathroom, or always reacting a little vulnerable and awkward when you're clocked instead of laughing it off and making a homophobic joke abt it)

And then, years later there's a ship! It's popular and at first the writers aren't really seriously thinking about it but they'll throw the fans a bone here and there. Then, some writers do get on the destiel train and start actively writing scenes for them that are suggestive. And only a fraction of what they write actually makes it into the text. So many lines left on the cutting room floor: i love past you. i forgive you i love you. i lost cas and it damn near broke me. spread cas's ashes alone. of course i wanted you to stay. if cas were here. -- etc. Everything cut was not cut by the writers! Why would a writer write something to then sabotage their own story and cut it? No, these are things that didn't make it past the network. Somewhere a note was made maybe "too gay" or "don't feed the shippers" or simply "no destiel."

So, "no destiel." That's pretty clearly the message we got from the CW for years. "No destiel. Destiel will alienate our general audience. Two of our main characters being queer? And in a relationship? No way." So what can the pro-destiel creatives involved do, if the network is saying no? What can the writers do if most of their explicit destiel (or queer dean) lines / moments are getting cut? Relegate things to subtext. Make jokes that straight people can wave off but queer people can read into. Make costuming and set design choices that the hardcore fans who are already looking will notice while the general audience and the out-of-touch network execs won't blink and eye at (I'm looking at you Jerry and your lamps and disappearing second nightstands and your gay flamingo bar!)

And then, when the audience asks, "is destiel real? is this proof of destiel?" what can the creatives do but deny? Yes, it hurts, to be told "No no I don't know what you're talking about. There's no destiel in supernatural" a la "there is no war in Ba Sing Se" but! if the network said "no destiel!" and you and your creative team have been working to keep putting destiel in the subtext of the narrative in a way that will get past censors, you can't just go "Yes, actually, all that subtext and symbolism you're picking up, yea it's because destiel is actually in the narrative."

But, there's a BIG difference between actively putting queer themes and subtext into the narrative and then saying it's not there (but it is! and the audience sees it!) versus NOT putting any queer content into the text but SAYING it is there to entice queer fans to continue watching. The latter, is textbook queerbaiting. The former? Is not. The former is the tactics so many creatives have had to use for years, decades, centuries, to get past censorship and signal to those in the know that yea, characters like you are here, they exist in this story.

Were the spn writers perfect? No, absolutely not. And I don't think every instance of queer content was a secret signal. Some stuff, depending on the writer, might've been a period-typical gay joke. These writers are flawed. But it's no secret that there were pro-destiel writers in the writing room throughout the years, and that efforts were made to make it explicitly canon (the market research!)

So no, the writers weren't ever perfect or a homogeneous entity. But they definitely were fighting an uphill battle constantly for 15 yrs against S&P and network execs with antiquated ideas of what's profitable / appealing.

Spn even called out the networks before, on the show, using a silly example of complaints abt the lighting of the show and how dark the early seasons were. Brightening the later seasons wasn't a creative choice, but a network choice. And if the networks can complain abt and change something as trivial as the lighting of a show, they definitely are having a hand in influencing the content of the show, especially queer content.

Even in s15, (seasons fifteen!!!) Misha has said he worried Castiel's confession would not air. In 2020!!! And Jensen recorded that scene on his personal phone! Why? Sure, for the memories. But also, I do not doubt for a second that part of it was for insurance, should the scene mysteriously disappear completely. We've seen the finale script. We've seen the omitted omitted omitted scenes. We all saw how they hacked the confession scene to bits. The weird cuts and close-ups. That's not the writers doing. That's likely not even the editors (willingly). That's orders from on high. All of the fuckery we saw in s15 reeks of network interference. Writers are not trying to sabotage their own stories, believe me.

Anyways, TLDR: Networks have a lot more power than many think and they get final say in what makes it to air. And for years creative teams have had to find ways to get past network censorship if they want "banned" or "unapproved" "unprofitable" "unwanted" content to make it into the show. That means relying on techniques like symbolism, subtext, and queercoding, and then shutting up about it. Denying its there, saying it's all "open to interpretation" all while they continue to put that open to interpretation content into the show. And that's not queerbaiting, as frustrating as it might be for queer audiences to be told that what they're seeing isn't there, it's still not queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is a marketing technique to draw in queer fans by baiting them with the promise of queer content and then having no queer content in said media. But if you are picking up on queer themes / subtext / symbolism / coding that is in front of your face IN the text, that's not queerbaiting. It's there, covertly, for you, because someone higher up didn't want it to be there explicitly or at all.

#long post #LONG-ass post #but it needed to be said!#i'm sorry if you think every creative involved with spn was a braindead asshole but the thing is.#even the most mediocre of writers understands a thing or two abt symbolism and writers working in TV are plagued by S&P #countless writers have talked abt the S&P bullshit and having to tweak and edit down their work to get past censors #it's a reality of writing for television #and the people who understand all this and understand the context of making TV in the early 2000s (to present tbh!) aren't 'delusional'#i'm sorry but it's naive to think that queer stories and queer characters are free to be told even nowadays. it's still a constant battle #times have changed but unfortunately not as much as you'd think #the confession !!!!! the confession still struggled to air and what we got was so obviously hacked down to bits!!!!!!#how can anyone think getting destiel content into the show was ever easy?#how can anyone think the pro-destiel writers weren't constantly having to be careful and underhanded in their writing?#there's a reason queercoding and subtext exist and it's this!!! it's censorship from TPTB #anyways. people much older than me have been talking abt this for ages. younger fans who are used to more open queer rep need to understand #it hasn't always been that easy and even nowadays SO many networks are still not willing to take a risk on queer stories #so creators do what they can #vic.txt

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ice-sculptures · 11 months

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hmm. this might just be me being overly sensitive as usual but i think that regardless of how likely (or unlikely, in other cases) it is for a ship to be canon, delusional is kind of a mean thing to say about queer fans of a show hoping that a gay ship might become canon. fans of heterosexual ships never get that energy no matter how insignificant or unlikely their ship is, so why is it considered okay to say to people just because the pairing they're rooting for is queer?

and like. i feel like since because it's never actually been done before, some people (often victims of older queerbait ships like destiel or klance) have this superiority complex over ‘knowing’ that whatever newer queer ship will "never be canon." they revel in the bitter idea that since it didn't happen to them in the past, it could never happen to us in the future, but they're missing the entire point — that yes, it's never been done before, so something has to be first, right? someone has to, and one day, someone will take that first revolutionary step for queer media representation eventually, so why is it considered so outlandish for fans of ships that haven't happened yet to wish that they'll be the lucky ones and that it will one day happen for them?

do you know what i think? i think that delusional is a great word to throw in people's faces and a really quick, easy way to make them feel like shit for simply having hope that the world is changing and getting better. and that's why it feels especially cruel to me when this disdain comes from fans of ships like destiel, because you know that they were once in the same exact place of wishing and hoping, but instead of acknowledging that the world has changed significantly and recognizing that queer rep in media needs to change along with it, they're still stuck in the era where gay people were the butt of the joke and will now take every single writing decision in bad faith, often twisting and misinterpreting the narrative completely because of it.

anyway, idk, maybe it's just me, but i'd rather be the eternal optimist living in a world knowing that the first slowburn queer ship in a piece of popular media not specifically marketed as queer will happen one day than be the cynical pessimist content to never expect anything great to ever come along and who constantly tries to dash the hopes of anyone who dares to dream that things can change, making not only themselves but every single person around them downright miserable in the process.

#buddie #rae.txt

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metalheadmickey · 1 year

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it's tag game tuesday wednesday THURSDAY. fandom edition, baby! thank you to our beloved @celestialmickey for kicking it off and for tagging me, and also to @energievie & @tanktopgallavich !! 💛💛

your name: jessie

your age: 33

your first fandom(s): i usually say supernatural, but fuck it, i think it was spartacus. i may have engaged with it in a very different way, but i was hyperfixated as hell. i went to my first and only fan conventions. by myself! i never want to go to fan conventions! so yeah. spartacus.

your current fandom(s): shameless, and to a lesser degree these days, supernatural

how did you first get into fandom? hyperfixated on a show, stumbled upon the fandom side of tumblr, did not make a tumblr but lurked a little bit, decided fic was cringey and that i didn't like reading it (it was a v small fandom with not a lot of quality content), hyperfixated on another show and decided to try reading fic again, had my entire world rocked to its core, made a blog, been around ever since.

how long have you been engaging with fandom spaces? like nine years?

how often do you read fanfics? i'd say every day, usually when i'm in bed.

top 3 characters from your current fandom(s): mickey milkovich, dean winchester, castiel.

have you ever written a fic for a fandom? if so, shout it out! i sure have!

have you ever drawn fanart for a fandom? if so, drop a link! nope!

share a personal headcanon that you feel very strongly about: mickey was thinking about yevgeny when he and ian had the parenthood conversation in 11x12.

you’re trying to convince a friend to get into your current fandom(s) with you. what episode, clip, or scene are you showing them? okay so i actually did this with one of my closest irl friends and she got...possibly more into supernatural than i am, and she reads destiel fic, and has had intense gallavich fic phases as well. and it was actually super easy lol. she just has the same kind of brain that i have, and i just had to tell her to watch the shows because i knew they'd fuck her up the same way they fucked me up. she saw my reaction after november 5th 2020 and wanted to know everything, so i told her everything, and she started watching spn the next day. i watched shameless a couple months later and lost my entire mind, and all i had to do was tell her that she NEEDED to watch it, and she started watching it right away. i think if i had to show her a specific scene though, it probably would've been mickey coming out in 4x11. iconic, legendary. she would've eaten that up even with no context. also special shoutout to this friend, because she's the person who taught me to not be embarrassed about being interested in fic, or fandom in general. i always thought she was so brave for being open about her hyperfixations in her everyday life, like for real lol. i still struggle with it, but i've gotten more open about it because of her.

and finally, what does fandom mean to you? a community of some of my best friends, and the place where i learned that i can actually be a creative person. i'm doing all kinds of fulfilling things with my life because of this space 🥹

tagging @howlinchickhowl @whatwouldmickeydo @gardenerian @gallawitchxx @heymrspatel @whatthebodygraspsnot @you-are-so-much-better-than-that @iansfreckles @squidyyy23 @auds-and-evens @mishervellous @7x10mickey @lalazeewrites and anyone else who wants to play 🖤🖤🖤

#tag game tuesday! 💛#tag game #if anyone else tagged me to do this and i didn't see it i'm sorry! tumblr hasn't been consistently notifying me of mentions

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chocolatecakecas · 3 years

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Baby Blues

Silence and Sound: Season 13 Destiel Fic Part 10

Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

read on ao3

Dean had always associated the bunker with silence. The soft hum of the the ancient heating system, and the dull buzzing of the lights.

It was a far cry from the dingy motels with their paper thin walls and strings of seedy customers.

Or the years he spent practically living in the Impala with her ever rumbling engine, listening to the legos rattling in the vents, or kept awake by Sam's endless snores.

So he could appreciate the silence. He had always found it comforting, at least that's what he told himself.

But now, the bunker is bursting with noise.

Plates and cups clinking in the kitchen, cellphones ringing off the hook, the beeping of the oven timer, and the stream of constant conversation.

The sound of tiny feet pattering on the concrete, plastic wheels squeaking on the wooden floors, the clang of legos on the map table, and the distant sounds of Toy Story playing on the tv in the Dean Cav- living room.

Shrieks of laughter ring through the halls, both young and old. Happiness and love filling every corner.

But it's also filled with sounds of despair.

(read the rest under the cut)

Screaming matches in the kitchen, muffled arguments behind closed doors, desperate pleading in the garage after returning from a hunt gone bad.

Wails of pain from a scraped knee, the clang of legos as they are angrily shoved off the map table and sent scattering across the floor, the distant sound of a temper tantrum in the living room.

Broken shouts and muffled sobs ring through the dark halls during the early hours of the morning. Both young and old. Yet, love still fills every corner, but often it only fuels the sorrow, strengthening the blow.

But today, it's filled with laughter.

Cas, pretending to chase Jack, who's giggling like a maniac, up and down the halls. His little feet slapping against the floors, as Cas yells behind him (in his signature "silly voices" of course)

Sam and Eileen at the map table, laughing as she tells a story about her most recent hunt. She ran into Claire and Kaia due to a huge miscommunication on Sam's end (He's still getting the hang of the whole "Hunter HQ" thing), causing all three of them think they were hunting three different monsters. But it's alright because now the girls are coming for dinner later, (at Cas' invitation and Dean's insistence) since they drove all the way here for a hunt anyway. It wouldn't be a full family dinner, because his Mom and Bobby wouldn't be back from their hunt in Montana for at least another two days, but that just means they'd have to have another unplanned-planned "get together", so he definitely wasn't complaining.

And Dean stands in the kitchen stirring milk, cheese and Star Wars shaped macaroni in a pot, spoon clanking against the metal.

He listens to the sound of his little family, the people he cares about most in the world. He hears as the sounds of their lives fill up the halls, and finds it difficult to remember the silence.

He finds himself struggling to hear the soft hum of the heating system, or the dull buzz of the lights.

And he wonders if he misses it? Wonders if he misses the comfort of the silence? Wonders if it wa-

Something crashes into his legs, ripping Dean from his thoughts.

Jack giggles as he tries to hide himself from view behind Dean's legs. He shushes Dean with a serious look, showing that he means business.

So Dean looks down and throws him an exaggerated wink, zipping his lips for good measure, which sends him into another fit of giggles.

Dean gazes travels back up to see Cas hanging on the doorway, cheeks tinged pink, and a knowing smile on his lips. And Dean's heart definitely doesn't skip a beat.

"Hello Dean, you haven't happened to see our son anywhere, have you?" Cas asks dramatically, making his presence known.

Our son, that always makes Dean's heart soar.

"Hmm Jack? Why no, I can't say that I have! He definitely didn't come through the kitchen" Dean responds playing along.

Jack shuffles behind Dean's leg letting out a little giggle.

"Oh, so then you wouldn't mind moving away from the stove and walking over here to help me look for him?" Cas teases, stretching his arms out for emphasis. Dork.

With a grin, Dean goes to take an exaggerated step towards Cas, but Jack pulls on his leg.

"Daddy! You promised" Jack shouts in disbelief, hanging on Dean's legs.

"Sorry bud, but you were so quiet that I completely forgot you were there" Dean says with mock surprise.

Jack opens his mouth to retort, but Cas hums alerting him of his presence again. His eyes go wide, realizing he gave away his hiding spot, as Cas takes a big step forward.

And at that, Jack races from the room, with a shriek of laughter. Dean and Cas share a laugh watching him go.

God Jack is getting so big, 18 months. He's gonna be two this year, and Dean's heart clenches at the thought. Of course, being half angel he's developmentally "older" than two, but Dean doesn't like to think about that.

He turns towards Cas again, watching him fondly gazing at the now empty doorway.

And almost 10 months with Cas.

Cas' eyes finds their way back to Dean's, as they always do. So Dean stares back.

And it's this moment that Dean realizes just how human Cas has become, even with his grace intact. With his messy hair, his rumpled blue "dad" sweater and jeans, his mismatched socks, the soft smile on his face that crinkles around his eyes. And it hits him how far they've come.

It's been 18 months since that night wh-18 months since Jack came into his life. And a lot can happen in 18 months. You can fall ass backwards into raising a child, slow down a bit on hunting, start dating your best friend who’s been the secretly been in love with for years, who came back to life, and raise the child with him.

Something warm settles in his chest.

Dean refocuses on Cas, and notices a look he's never truly seen on him before. A look that says, "there's no place I'd rather be, than right here". Of course Cas has made it clear that this is what he wants, but he's never worn it so plainly on his face before.

It's contentment.

And it knocks the wind out of Dean's lungs.

It's been almost 10 months since Dean and Cas got their crap together.

And of course, it isn't easy. There's screaming matches, sleepless nights, petty fights, and more baggage between them than you would find in an airport.

But Dean wouldn't trade a second of it. And apparently, neither would Cas.

Because Cas is content. Here. With Dean.

Cas is actually happy here, with the little life they've created. This is where Cas wants to be, and this is where Dean wants Cas to be.

And in this moment Dean is rapidly realizing that it's all terrifyingly real.

And Dean's never felt this way in his life, about anyone or anything and he's, scared, but god it's the good kind of scared. And he-

He catches a slight dip in Cas' smile, which snaps him back to reality. His thoughts must have been clear on his face.

Shit that's not what he wan-

He quickly tries to convey the same look of contentment through his own features, giving Cas a smile. A real one.

And he must somewhat succeed because Cas' smile returns, but a question still lingers in his eyes.

So Cas parts his lips, most likely to ask Dean if something's wrong (Cas never lets him get away with anything), but Jack's laughter rings from the other room. So he huffs a laugh, and begins to cross the kitchen making his way to the other door.

But not before he places his hand on Dean's shoulder, and presses a soft kiss to his cheek.

Dean's heart swells. God that never gets old.

As he pulls back, he meets Dean's eyes again, leveling him with a look that Dean knows all too well. A slight smirk with a raised brow, that definitely doesn't make Dean's stomach flip.

It's his signature, "I know you Dean Winchester, which means we are definitely talking about whatever that look on your face was, later". And of course he always pretends to be annoyed that Cas can read him so well, but god if it doesn't make Dean's heart race a little every single time.

So Dean just gives a shit eating grin in return, and Cas' smile morphs into a smirk.

Then Cas is leaning forward, ready to capture his lips with his own, Dean happily following his lead.

But then, Cas pulls back at the last second.

And before Dean can even open his mouth, Cas gives a tight squeeze to his ass, and then he's bounding away through the door.

He hangs on the door frame for a moment, giving Dean a wink, and then he's gone, laugh ringing down the hall. Friggin tease.

"What a little shit", Dean laughs to himself, rolling his eyes fondly.

As he turns back to the pot on the stove, he hears Cas exaggeratedly wonder where Jack has gone, followed by the sound of Sam and Eileen joining in on the fun.

When he grabs five bowls from the cabinet, he makes sure to listen to the laughter echoing through the halls.

And Dean begins to wonder again.

Maybe he didn't find the silence of the bunker comforting, maybe he nev-

The laughter swells in the other room, feet stomping on the wooden floors. The love of his life, his son, his brother, his new best friend and hopefully one day sister-in-law. His family. Laughing together without a care in the world, on this lazy Sunday afternoon.

And well, Dean can't say he misses the silence much at all. In fact, he's actually quite content with the noise.

I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who read, liked/reblogged, or left lovely comments on this story! I have not written in years, this fic happened by complete accident, and I never could have imagined the love it got! (I do love this little "universe" so maybe look out for some more baby jack in the future)💓 AND a very special thanks to @wormstacheangel and @smiledean who listened to me complain and yell about this fic every week💓💓💓💓

Tag list:

(As always,please let me know if you would like to added or removed!!💛)

@wormstacheangel @smiledean @shelikestv @chaoticdean @midnightwings-deancas @jellydeans @sunshine-jack @archervale @wikiangela @organicpurplepants

@writtendevastation @tkdwolf2012 @doemons-blog @rolling-stoned-girl @skylerkernaghan @shadowywerewolfqueen @the-cookie-navy @thelahatiel @thefantasyfiend @castielle-deanna @aestheticflyer26

@multi-fandom-imagine @x-mypeopleskillsarerusty-x @wellofwoes @becky-srs @multi-fandom-dark-lord @perfectkoaladream @castiel-for-lunch @it--hurts--to--become @bowtiesandneckerchiefs @dakiaty @feraldean @teamfreebees @keshetcas @hrh-princess-bea @martymar1963 @winchester-novak

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tomhardysteeth · 4 years

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u wanna say anything for spn ending? Today's their last day of filming

Yeah sure! I love how you worded this ask, it makes me want to give a very serious answer. I’ve been rewatching random episodes the past few days and thinking about how much of my life was shaped by this random lil tv show, both positively and negatively, so here we go.

I started watching Supernatural during my junior year of college, when I was grappling with being gay and religious, and had a pseudo-girlfriend who was emotionally abusive. I remember I started watching the show because I had been on tumblr for a while and thought, well this is a popular show on tumblr and looks like something I’d enjoy, so I might as well try it. I remember barely paying attention to the first season and thinking it was kind of silly, and I distinctly remember making fun of it right up until the season 1 finale when that truck slammed into the Impala and I said oh.

I remember sitting in the dining hall between classes, hiding in a corner with my pink headphones and my laptop, watching one episode after the other, completely consumed by it. My personal life was a mess at the time and I was angry and sad and frustrated, but I could forget about everything for a little while when I watched spn. I remember falling in love with Dean Winchester, season 3, when Sam gave him the amulet.

Because I had already spent a lot of time on tumblr, I knew about Castiel. I couldn’t wait to get to season 4, the anticipation killed me. I didn’t really have a choice in shipping destiel, I literally shipped it before I even watched a single episode of the show lol. My first time watching seasons 4 and 5, I remember how mad I would feel every time the opening credits scrolled at the bottom of the screen and Misha Collins wasn’t listed. I cared about almost nothing but Dean and Cas interacting with each other. I was totally enamored by them, by their potential. At some point I got over that and watched the show because I liked the show, but boy did my heart and brain break for destiel.

I broke up with my abusive girlfriend. I started coming out to more people, including people involved in the Christian campus ministry I was heavily involved in, and it was very very hard. It was 2013. The first episode of Supernatural I watched live was the episode where Dean turns into a fucking dog.

I don’t remember when I started reading fanfic, and I had no idea how to read fanfic. A friend invited me to ao3, what is ao3? I didn’t know. I used my email address as my username. I read Twist and Shout and Pie Without Plot and other very popular fics that I knew about because everybody knew about them. I vividly remember the first fics I read because I was 21 years old and had never had an orgasm in my life and believed sex was sinful and so when the sex scenes in fics turned me on, I felt guilty about it.

I quickly got over that and started writing explicit destiel fanfic.

I still had no idea what I was doing. I know the very first fic I ever wrote was a mess, I’ve completely erased all traces of it, but other than that I began posting with abandon. Pretty much everything I’ve ever written for spn is still on tumblr and/or ao3. I was running a Hannibal blog at the time and started posting more Supernatural content than Hannibal content, so I created a sideblog, @deancasheadcanons, and things very quickly got out of hand after that.

I was depressed, I was confused, I was spending my last couple years of college trying to figure out my sexuality, trying to hold onto a religion that was rejecting who I was becoming, trying to find my identity while picking a career path and being sad and being pulled in a hundred different directions. Sometimes I was working three jobs at once, on top of 17-credit-hour semesters. I was getting a degree in a field I did not care about, and I spent every class reading and writing fanfic, scrolling through tumblr, making internet friends, letting my life be consumed by Supernatural. I projected myself completely onto Dean Winchester and partially onto Castiel and did not even realize it.

I started dressing like Dean, and my sister and brother-in-law noticed and assumed I was gay. They were extremely unsubtle in their attempts at getting me to come out by pointing out the flannel and army jackets, and I did not have it in me to admit to them that I was dressing like a fictional character, but I DID tell them I was bisexual.

I went to therapy every week during my senior year of college, and I was embarrassed about how often I talked about my “internet life,” as I called it. I remember having the arbitrary goal of getting 1,000 kudos on a fanfic, and I remember the day it happened for the first time and I remember going to therapy that week and saying that I didn’t feel any different, that I thought getting attention for my writing would make me feel better, somehow, but I still felt the same, and my therapist asked me if I would still be writing if I was the only one who got anything out of it and I said yes. But I was still obsessed with writing things that were meaningful, and despite the fact that I would receive 10 negative/mean anons per day, I never turned anon off because I desperately wanted people to tell me that my writing meant something to them, that it mattered to them. I was fighting with myself every day over my sexuality and my identity and my purpose, and I put all of that on the shoulders of Dean and Cas.

There was also chubby!dean. I had lived my entire life with this inexplicable thing, this shame that I knew I could not share, that I knew I would just have to suffer with for my whole life, and then I joined the spn fandom and found that there were others like me, others that had a fetish and had similar experiences as I did and were drawn to Dean Winchester because there’s no other character that could make eating and gaining weight be as enticing as he makes it (in fanfic). For the first time in my life I had a community of people that I could relate to about a thing that I never thought I would ever be able to talk about with anyone in my life. I don’t remember if I consciously chose to start posting publicly about it, but at some point I did, and I started writing kink fic, but I was still so uncomfortable with myself and so scared of the things I felt, and I tried so hard to temper myself and not offend anyone and not go “too far” and not be too weird and I was so sexually repressed and pent up and full of guilt and shame, and so now when I go back and reread some of the stuff I wrote it feels like reopening an old wound and letting myself bleed out.

I was constantly comparing myself to others and wondering why I wasn’t getting as much attention as so-and-so, and I always made excuses about how maybe my writing was too weird and I was too much and maybe I just wasn’t good enough and I hated myself and wanted to delete everything I ever wrote, but also I’m awesome and receive a lot of attention and get a lot of good feedback but maybe that means I’m just a narcissist! I acted like an asshole online and justified it by saying it wasn’t really me, that I could be someone totally different on tumblr than the person I was in “real life,” but in hindsight, now when I think back on my early 20s, I cannot separate what I was doing in “real life” from what I was doing in the spn fandom. I shared so much of myself with the spn fandom without even recognizing that that’s what I was doing.

And I made mistakes, god I made mistakes, and I tried to be so careful about everything I said but I was also presenting a certain version of myself to the spn fandom so that people would like me (for instance: running a destiel blog and trying my best to hide the fact that I also ship wincest) and still I got in trouble constantly, and I grew bitter and mean because you can only receive the “when are you posting the next chapter?” comment so many times before you want to bang your head into a wall. I became defensive and unkind, afraid to check my inbox because it was a nightmare, and yet unable to turn off anon because, like I said, I desperately needed that feedback, I needed people to tell me that they felt what I felt, that they understood what I was writing and why I was writing it.

I expected Supernatural to give me everything I needed. I fantasized about Dean Winchester being canonically bisexual because I thought it would confirm something in me, that it would somehow make my life a little bit easier. I didn’t want to watch other shows that could maybe help me, I wanted Supernatural to do things for me that it had never promised and would never deliver, and it’s because I was defined by it for so many years. Now that I’m back on tumblr, I’ve been going back through some of my old posts on deancasheadcanons and it’s like reading a stranger’s words. Even so, I find myself telling people “I was deancasheadcanons” instead of “I ran a sideblog called deancasheadcanons” because it really was such a huge part of my identity. What’s wild is that every time I’ve tried to explain it to someone in real life, they just look at me like I’m not making any sense.

It was easy to stop watching Supernatural. I didn’t have cable, and I had been driving to my dad and stepmom’s house each week and watching it on their tv after they had gone to bed. I was in a new relationship with a woman I nearly married, I was back in school for a new career, I was working full time and absolutely did not have time to continue writing fanfic as prolifically as I had done for so many years. I finally reached a breaking point in 2017 and haven’t watched any new episodes since then (I don’t remember the last episode I saw). But now, as I rewatch some old episodes, it is easy to feel the way I felt the first time I watched the show. It’s easy to see why this campy little heartfelt show was a lifeline during my formative adult years.

So it turns out I have never reckoned with any of this, have never written it down, hence the 2k jumble of words you see here. And it’s like, I know that a lot of this may seem silly, trivial, especially for a show that in itself is not very serious, but as it comes to an end I have to reflect on it as a person who put so much of my heart, my creativity, my pain and my floundering identity into it. I am somewhat embarrassed and wish I could respond to this ask with a joke instead, but we’re in a pandemic and I live alone and have had way too much time to think and reflect and become a lot more self-aware, and part of that reflection has definitely been about my time in the spn fandom. I remember thinking the show was never going to end, yet here we are at the end and I felt compelled to type all this out with a desire to, I don’t know, get some closure? Convince myself that I was a whole person, that I wasn’t just a faceless URL posting destiel fics into the void, that my real life was not at all disparate from the time I spent online? In any case, I’ll always think fondly of the time I devoted to Supernatural, and I’ll take the good and the bad and everything in between. Thanks for the nice ask, anon, apparently I needed to get some things off my chest.

#madd replies #long post #spn for ts #this is 2k words i am sorry lmao #wouldn't it be cool if i had any semblance of chill

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destieltropecollection · 4 years

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Destiel Trope Collection 2020 Day 11: Established Relationship

A Christmas Miracle | @gii-heylittleangel

Rating: General Word Count: 1019 Main Tags/Warnings: fluff; holiday fic Summary: A day to be marked: when Dean Winchester finally says "I love you".

Is there a reason you're naked in my bed? | @casseythebee

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1085 Main Tags/Warnings: kissing, nakedness, mentions of violence, blood, language Summary: the boys arrive back to the bunker after a hunt. With a bit of adrenaline still coursing through them they have a little fun, that gets a bit interrupted

Sick Day | @mrshays28-blog

Rating: General Word Count: 1093 Main Tags/Warnings: Established Relationship, Husbands, Castiel Has A Cold, Dean Takes Care of Castiel, Dean Gets A Cold, Domestic Fluff Summary: Dean and Castiel spend a quiet evening together just as Castiel’s starting to recover from a cold. Dedicated to anyone who’s gotten sick because their S.O. is also sick.

Ash | @deansrightfulangerissue

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1106 Main Tags/Warnings: Housefire, Canon Universe, Post-Canon, Angst with a Happy Ending Summary: Dean's shoulders tremble as they watch the flames devour everything he and Cas have built together.

Proposal Gone... Right? | @fangirlingtodeath513

Rating: General Word Count: 1194 Main Tags/Warnings: Castiel/Dean Winchester,Dean Winchester,Castiel (Supernatural),Marriage Proposal,Fluff,Domestic Fluff,Romance Summary: Dean's been planning this proposal for a long time, but on the day he's actually supposed to propose, nothing seems to go his way. Will he actually manage to propose without everything falling apart?

Faithfully | @cr-noble-writes

Rating: General Word Count: 1311 Main Tags/Warnings: Fluff, Mild Angst, Happy Ending, deaf cas, Rockstar Dean Summary: Castiel is very unhappy with the fact that Dean is working on Valentine’s Day. But maybe he can be forgiven.

You look so sexy when you’re ignoring me. | @casseythebee

Rating: General Word Count: 1415 Main Tags/Warnings: language Summary: After Castiel catches Dean flirting with a, quite frankly gorgeous, girl at a bar he tries to give him the silent treatment, for the first time.

Just The Way You Are | @gii-heylittleangel

Rating: General Word Count: 1555 Main Tags/Warnings: self esteem issues, body image issues, emotional hurt/comfort Summary: Coming back home to only silence is never good in Dean's vision; finding Cas crying, all alone, makes it even worse.

Spit-Polish and Shine | @jemariel

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 1564 Main Tags/Warnings: PWP, voyeurism/exhibitionism, top!Cas, bottom!Dean, sex on the Impala Summary: You know how Dean Winchester doesn't wear shorts? Well. Sometimes he does. Unredeemed filthy porn on a car.

and let me correct it | @curioussubjects

Rating: Mature Word Count: 1584 Main Tags/Warnings: Coda, Episode: s15e09 The Trap, Fluff and Smut, Established Relationship, Getting Back Together, Feelings, Non-Penetrative Sex, Post-Episode: s15e09 The Trap Summary: They’re in the hallway about to part for the night when Dean makes a decision. He steps closer to Cas, slowly – careful since it’s been a while since they were last like this. Cas doesn’t back away, doesn’t add any distance between them, though he looks at Dean with curiosity, a trace of hope and a challenge in his eyes.

Not According To Plan | @peanutbutterjelly-pie

Rating: General Word Count: 1724 Main Tags/Warnings: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Established Relationship Summary: A fire truck, a smoky kitchen and an unexpected surprise are awaiting Dean after coming back home from work.

Meeting Emma | @deansrightfulangerissue

Rating: General Word Count: 1952 Main Tags/Warnings: Mention of a Car Accident, Minor Injury to a Child, Hospital Setting, Alternate Universe, Dad!Dean Summary: Dean’s pacing the hospital corridor like some nervous expecting father. After all, that’s who he is right now. And the daughter he didn’t know he had will be here any moment.

An Angel Cake for an Ex-Angel | @cloverhighfive

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 2411 Main Tags/Warnings: domestic fluff, romantic fluff Summary: Cas is depressed and Dean is looking to make him feel better by baking him an angel food cake (he fails a few times).

Kiss and Make Up | @fangirlingtodeath513

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 2546 Main Tags/Warnings: Castiel/Dean Winchester,Dean Winchester,Castiel,Smut,Fluff and Smut,Arguing,Jealousy,Angry Sex,make-up sex,Blow Jobs,Face-Fucking,Topping from the Bottom,Power Bottom,Bottom Castiel/Top Dean Winchester,Power Bottom Castiel (Supernatural),Bottom Castiel (Supernatural),Top Dean Winchester,Barebacking,Naked Cuddling,Post-Coital Cuddling Summary: It's the same argument they've had a million times before; Dean's too jealous, especially when Castiel is already engaged to him. This time, though, Cas isn't going to let their argument get in the way of some hot make-up sex.

Home Alone | @kitmistry

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 2740 Main Tags/Warnings: Underage, Highschool AU, Fluff and Humor Summary: ""Dean, shut up,"" Castiel cut him off, flush faced and gorgeous, and looking every bit done with Dean's complaints and every layer of clothes between them. He yanked Dean's shirt off, before lowering his head to suck and bite at the curve where neck met shoulder, and Dean's brain fizzled out. He couldn't think of much else but fingers undoing his belt, and the tan skin he uncovered when he managed to wrestle Cas out of his shirt, and then there was a hand making its way inside his underwear, Cas kissing him to breathlessness. A car door slammed closed outside the house. Or the one where Dean is stuck in a bathroom.

The Secret Boyfriend | @fangirlingtodeath513

Rating: General Word Count: 2759 Main Tags/Warnings: Marriage, Weddings, Engagement, Engaged Castiel/Dean Winchester, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, Wedding Jitters, Established Relationship, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester Summary: It all starts when Sam sends Dean and Cas separate invitations for his wedding. Then there's the fact that Mary asks if they'll mind sharing a bed. Dean's family can't still be in the dark about the fact that he and Cas are together... can they?

I've Never Wished for Anything more than You | @gii-heylittleangel

Rating: General Word Count: 3054 Main Tags/Warnings: canon temporary character death; canon divergent 12x23 Summary: Dean has lost many people before—it’s practically a normal thing in his line of work—but none of them hurt as much as Castiel’s death. Especially because Dean is sure there’s no possible way for the angel to come back again. Or so he thought.

It was just a prank | @notfunnydean

Rating: General Word Count: 3795 Main Tags/Warnings: Prank Wars, April Fools' Day, Sam writes a love letter in Cas' name, hurt!Dean, playing with someone's feelings Summary: When Sam wakes up to discover that his mattress is soaking wet and his brother laughing loudly, he decides to take vengeance. Somehow, along the way, the prank war turns a bit too serious and Dean ends up really hurt.

Deep Blue Ocean | @suckerfordeansfreckles

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 4046 Main Tags/Warnings: creature AU, cecaelia Cas, tentacles, first time, bottom Dean, established relationship Summary: Dean’s been in contact with supernatural creatures and people for all his life, as far as he can remember. He’s been working as a social worker for years now, specifying on cases that involve supernatural families. But he’s never really… been with a supernatural creature. He’s never been with anyone, ever, for more than a night, really — not the relationship type, that‘s what he used to excuse it on. But then he met Cas, on a case he worked with his brother, one in a cecaelia community in California. He met Cas, a cecaelia himself, and was kind of lost right away, because Cas was friendly, helpful, articulate and kind of brilliant. He’s also… gorgeous. When Dean first saw him, he kind of lost all breath and brainpower. They’ve been together for a few months now, but in all this time, they haven’t been intimate, haven’t really dared to go beyond their heavy make-out sessions. It’s especially hard again for Dean today, to not just devour Cas. To not just beg him for more.

On Display | @saltnhalo

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 4053 Main Tags/Warnings: Dom Castiel/Sub Dean Winchester, Explicit Sexual Content, Bottom Dean Winchester, Top Castiel (Supernatural), Praise Kink, Team Dean Winchester's Red Ass, Toys, Exhibitionism, Camboy Dean Winchester, Panties Summary: “I’ve invited a special guest for today,” Dean tells his viewers, glancing away from the camera as the bed dips beside him. Cas is all easy confidence as he settles onto the mattress next to Dean, and they share a quick smile before Dean turns his attention back to the viewers. “This is my boyfriend. For all of you who’ve wanted to see me get fucked by something other than my varied collection of toys…” He winks teasingly and pitches his voice a little deeper—teasing, sultry. “Today’s your lucky day.”

Texas Sun | @banshee1013

Rating: Mature Word Count: 4185 Main Tags/Warnings: Established Relationship, Sam Winchester Is Not Amused, Fluff, Canon Related, Honeymoon Summary: Ever since Cas and Dean tied the knot, they have been driving Sam *insane* with their inappropriately located and utterly spontaneous make-out suggestions. So when he finds them looking at filming locations for the movie ""Tombstone"" in Arizona, he suggests they take some time (and give him a break!) and road-trip it. Dean plans the route and takes the long way 'round through Texas - all the more time to spend with his angel, and show him some sights along the way.

Till Dawn | @kitmistry

Rating: Mature Word Count: 4431 Main Tags/Warnings: Major Character Death, Implied Suicide, Zombie Apocalypse AU, Fluff and Agst Summary: Before the world went to hell and the dead took over, Castiel and Dean couldn't have led more different lives. While Castiel was wasting away at an insurance company, Dean was busy chasing tornadoes around the country with his brother. They would have never met - they wouldn't have even known the other existed - if humanity hadn't crumbled like a card tower. Or the one where Dean helps Castiel escape.

Red | @gii-heylittleangel

Rating: Mature Word Count: 5509 Main Tags/Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, gore and blood, minor characters deaths, major character injury Summary: Dean didn't even think; he ran to Cas as fast as he could, screaming his name in pure terror, grabbing a handful of Cas's uniform to pull him into his lap. Cas's eyes were wide as he stared at Dean, hands grasping uselessly at the wound by his side. His uniform was soon more red than green and Dean could feel it seeping through his combat pants. The smell soon reached Dean's nose and he couldn't do anything more than just cradle Cas's head between his hands, sobs coming out of his mouth along with something he thought was please no, not him, not him. He never actually believed in prayer until that very moment but he had to start, because all he could do was pray to any and every gods that could be out there to not take Cas away from him, because Dean wouldn't be able to survive without him; Dean couldn’t even think of living without Cas. The amount of blood and the paleness that Cas's face was turning told Dean that none of the gods were actually hearing him, but he kept on praying because there was nothing more he could do; please, God, no, not Cas, please, don't take him away from me, I love him.

Interrupted | @a-mandala-rose

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 5818 Main Tags/Warnings: Established Dean/Cas, Kid Fic Summary: “Cas, babe, I’m ready,” Dean pants, “please..” but the rest of his plea is cut off by a sudden wail from the baby monitor. Jack. “Goddammit!” Dean lets out a noise that is definitely not a whimper as Cas stills his hand. “It would be wrong to dose them all with Benadryl, right?” “Dean.” “Just checking.” Dean loves his and Cas' three children with his whole heart, but he desperately needs some alone time with his husband. OR The world's most relatable fanfic ever. (If you've ever had small children, that is.)

Long Exposure | @saltnhalo

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 7581 Main Tags/Warnings: Model Dean Winchester, Photographer Charlie, Dom/sub Undertones, Dom Castiel, Sub Dean, Model Castiel, Top Castiel, Bottom Dean, Photography, Photographer Castiel, Nude Modeling, Exhibitionism Summary: Nude model wanted for erotic photoshoot. All photographs will only be submitted for assessment at approval of model. Males and females welcome – must be willing to take directions. All photography will be undertaken in a safe studio, and at the pace and comfort of the model. Payment of $100 for two hours of work. Tear off a number if interested.

Ignorance Is Bliss (Usually) | @pray4jensen

Rating: Mature Word Count: 8185 Main Tags/Warnings: Established Relationship, Fluff, Humour, Domestic Summary: Dean and Cas have a very public deathbed confession and officially become an item. And this would totally be thrilling—except Sam gets knocked out during the fight and misses the whole damn thing. Or the one where everybody except Sam knows and Sam thinks Dean’s sudden newfound celibacy is a witch’s curse.

Try A Little Stardust | @cuddlemonsterdean

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 8594 Main Tags/Warnings: Fluff and Angst, Hurt!Dean, Disabled!Dean, Happy Ending Summary: They soak for long enough that Dean actually falls into a light doze. It’s nice to just enjoy the water and the quiet for a while. It’s only been a handful of days, but Castiel has missed holding Dean like this and being close to him. His warmth and the beat of his heart are grounding, anchoring, and to Castiel it will always be special to know him this intimately.

A Different Kind of Filling | @gracefuldean

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 9239 Main Tags/Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Established Relationship, Vampire Hunt, Diners, Porn with Plot, Porn with Feelings, Dom/Sub Undertones, Possessive Castiel, Food Play Summary: After taking care of a vampire nest near Bicknell, Utah, Dean and Castiel stop for a quick bite at one of the town’s diners, known for its (in)famous pickle pie. The unusual dessert is just the beginning of an afternoon Dean won’t ever forget, in which weird fillings and not so new feelings will make him realize that he truly has got it all.

After you and me, there is us | @castielscarma

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 13091 Main Tags/Warnings: Divorced Cas/Dean, past relationship, grief/mourning, child loss, getting back together Summary: Dean is forced to deal with his feelings and emotions about everything after meeting his ex-husband while having lunch.

Circles of Gold | @pomegranatedaffodil

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 17312 Main Tags/Warnings: Fantasy AU, Royalty AU, Established Relationship, Secret Relationship, Flashbacks, Friends to Lovers Summary: Seven years ago, Dean and Castiel chose each other over their families, their kingdoms, and their crowns. They have since come to terms with that decision, but the arrival of a messenger from Dean’s kingdom disturbs the peaceful life they’ve built together and forces them to make another choice, one that could have equally lasting consequences.

Fight or Flight | @ellis-park

Rating: Mature Word Count: 23186 Main Tags/Warnings: Canon universe, canon-typical violence, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort Summary: Just when Dean's started to feel good about his life — the end is not nigh, and his brother and his angel are safe in the bunker — Sam and Cas start keeping secrets from him. It's not a big deal, at least not at first. Everyone needs to play some things close to the chest. But when Dean finds out what they've been hiding, the bubble of carefree happiness he's carefully placed around his family finally bursts.

A Treason of Truths | @cr-noble-writes

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 28035 Main Tags/Warnings: fantasy au, faerie!cas, demon!dean, moc!dean, minor character deaths, major character injury, angst with a happy-ish ending, smut, bondage, orgasm denial, dom/sub dynamics, top!cas, bottom!dean Summary: When the time comes for The Seelie Court to confront the Dark Realm about their attempted conquests of surrounding kingdoms, Castiel asks that Dean accompany him on a diplomatic trip to The Royal City in the center of the Dark Realm. Dean is unable to refuse his lover, especially because he knows the danger the King will be in. But Dean has a dangerous secret that could cost him both his love and his life. Will their relationship survive the discovery of a sinister plot for the Fomóraigh to take over the Otherworld?

#destiel trope collection 2020 #destiel trope collection #Destiel #established relationship #day 11

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sharkfish · 4 years

Text

ps i loved this one

(rereading bookmarks edition part 2)

(part 1)

i’ve been rereading stories from my bookmarks as a comfort thing. i’m getting real deep in there to stuff i haven’t (re)read for years, and damn do i have good taste. the ones i’ve read recently that you should, too:

(under the cut so i’m not that asshole that makes you scroll past an endless post)

Best Laid Plans by Persephoneshadow

Things are going well for Dean: he's landed the biggest design job of his architectural career and is about to get final approval on the project despite how difficult the development company, personified by Castiel Novak, has made it. It's not bad for a moody omega...except things are also going terribly for Dean because he has to get in a plane and fly to a meeting, and course ends up in heat a few hours before. Luckily, Castiel is there to help and both men discover the good that can come when nothing goes quite as intended.

i don’t know why i’m such a ho for stories where dean thinks cas hates him, but cas secretly adores him and is just a little “rusty” on his “people skills.” i’m also a ho for stories where dean is a gd skilled genius but his dumb ass still thinks his work sucks and/or anything good is due to other people instead of himself. and also, heat boning.

Confessions of a Cam Boy by MsCaptainWinchester (rons_pigwidgeon)

Dean runs a cam show to pay his way through marketing school, but he's about to start an internship that he doesn't know will change his life. Watching Dean's show is Castiel's favorite way to wind down after a stressful day at Sandover Bridge & Iron. When Cas comes to work one day and finds his favorite cam boy setting coffee on his desk, he is completely thrown. Will Dean finish his internship without knowing his favorite viewer is his new boss, or will he be able to see through Cas' non-existent poker face and figure it out?

omg poor cas is soooo awkward and dean is weirded out about how much his new boss seems to dislike him and then it’s super sexy >:)

For Science by shiphitsthefan

“Think of it like an experiment," says Dean. "You’re testing a hypothesis as to whether or not a desirable response can be achieved through the stimulation of the anus via the application of a willing volunteer’s muscular hydrostat.”

Cas raises an eyebrow. “Are you actually trying to use the scientific method to talk me into letting you lick my asshole?”

everyone is such adorable nerds in this one. it’s a fic about rimming, but it’s also about love and discovering yourself and acceptance. it explores cas’s realization through his connection with dean that he’s not straight up ace but more grey/demi - and that doesn’t mean he was “faking” being ace up until he met dean.

Friends with Benefits with Tentacles by andimeantittosting (Saylee)

Dean's never been embarrassed about his porn collection before, but that was before he found Cas holding his prized copy of Sweet Princess Asuka and the Tentacles of Pleasure. Dean finds himself sweating bullets—because this is Cas, sweet, nerdy Cas. Cas, his friend. Cas, his roommate. Cas, his—only slightly out-of-control—crush.

Cas, with his big, blue eyes and muscular arms and perpetual sex hair.

Cas, with his tentacles.

The last thing he expects is for Cas to suggest they experiment together.

there are not enough tentacle fics out there and i 100000% approve of this addition to the tag. i love that dean is out there legitimately studying porn, and the tentacles are obviously super fun, and there were parts where my heart hurt so bad, all around a damn fine fic.

Grown-Ups Making Grown-Up Choices by Carrieosity

Dean is a grown-ass man - he can take perfectly good care of himself, thank you very much. Except that sometimes the easier or more fun choices aren't always the right or best ones, and, all right, maybe thinking ahead and working the long game isn't his strongest suit. It's fine! He's fine.

When he meets Castiel, he realizes that flying by the seat of his pants may not be the best way to attract the super-serious (gorgeous, funny, genius) Alpha. Dean's shrink has been telling him he needs to start making "grown-up choices," and if that's what he has to think about in order to make Cas fall for him, then he'll give it a whirl.

i LOVE this fic (series). i feel so hard for dean feeling like he’s too old for his life to still be a mess, but i also felt sad for him that he thought he had to make all these hardcore changes - basically turn himself into a different person - to be worthy of cas’s attentions. i fucking adore cas in this, and i nearly cried just thinking about all the damn peppers they eat, and i want to read it again right now.

If I Run by Anonymous

"Dean Winchester is a red-blooded American male. He lifts all the things. He aims for functional strength. He counts his macros and makes fun of curlbros. He is not a member of the Tarahumara tribe and he will not read Born to Run, no matter how many times Sam tells him to, because Starting Strength is the only book Dean will ever fucking need."

***

Wherein a friendly competition with the mysterious ThursdaysAngel turns into a sexy selfie-trading spree that motivates Dean Winchester to train for his first marathon.

i really really love this fic and reread it pretty often tbh. it only became “anonymous” pretty recently and i’m so curious about why!! regardless, this fic is a really great time!!!

It's Always More Than Once (Before It Takes) by squeemonster

The first time it happens, it's because of boredom. Or, at least that's what Dean tells himself to justify it. Boredom and Dean Winchester are a dangerous combination, especially when you factor in beer, a raging libido, and laziness.

dean: my dudes, is it gay to do sexy stuff with your male bff? cuz i’m totally straight. but also, having sex with my male bff.

I Wanna Get Outside (Of Me) by emwebb17

Dean is a novice in the dom/sub world asked by his employer as a desperate last resort to be a sub for his recluse of a brother, Castiel. Castiel is a diagnosed OCD suffering from PTSD and agoraphobia, mysophobia, and dystychiphobia. Needless to say—he’s a mess who hasn’t stepped out of his home in literally seven years. The only times Gabriel can see traces of the way his brother used to be is when he feels in control—specifically when he has control over a sub. However, due to his idiosyncrasies and paranoia, keeping a sub around has been impossible. Enter Dean, who’s not a very traditional submissive, to try his hand at subbing for the hermit.

you know how sometimes you read a fic, and it takes ages to get yourself out of that world? even though you’re finished, you’re still right there with him? this is one of those fics. i reread it a couple weeks ago and fell asleep thinking about it last night. i cry a lot reading this one.

Living in Agony by ChasingRabbits

Dean Winchester's life is... well, it's not great. He's a gym teacher, he's in his thirties, and he can't seem to keep any part of his life straight. When the aftermath of a one-night stand goes awry, Dean is dragged kicking and screaming out of his cozy little closet and into the harsh light of reality.

Enter: Castiel Novak, the new history teacher, who knows full well that life gets crappy when you don't allow yourself to live it in the way it needs to be lived.

there aren’t a lot of stories that deal with themes of mental illness, and a lot of them read like an episode of degrassi where everything wraps up in 30min to never be discussed again. this story is honest in that there’s no easy out. there’s medication and therapy and supportive people, but that’s not always enough. it’s a story about how you don’t have to be mentally ill to be fucked up, and while people can’t fix each other, they can help each other. content note: references to a pre-story suicide attempt.

Oddly Shaped Empty by jemariel

Dean grew up thinking -- knowing -- he'd be an alpha.

Until he failed to present. As a beta, he has no mating cycle, no noticeable pheromones, none of the physical markers that are so important in a world of alphas and omegas. He's out of place. How is he supposed to navigate his relationships and find love when he doesn't fit into the neatly-defined boxes he's used to?

By the time he meets his new roommate, Castiel, he's more or less given up on finding a mate. He wears his secondary gender like a chip on his shoulder. But you never know what the future holds, who will come into your life, and how they might change it forever.....

Queer themes, finding identity, reconciling the past, and a whole lot of smut.

y’all know @jemariel is a gd genius, but i’m particularly obsessed with their fics that use abo to explore queer identify & experiences. i hold my breath reading most of this fic and also cry.

Steal my Breath by Sincestiel

“Tighter, Dean, please,” Cas urges throwing his head back to rest on Dean’s shoulder. Dean squeezes. He doesn’t know why Cas wants this or even what the appeal is, but he always comes harder when he’s struggling to breathe.

what’s on the tin. a quick lil breathplay fic that is thoroughly enjoyable.

Unsolicited by Dangerousnotbroken

In which Dean Winchester gets an unsolicited dick pic from an unknown sender which is both totally not disappointing in that it's a really nice dick pic, and incredibly disappointing in that it's clearly a downloaded picture of his favorite porn star.

There's absolutely no way it's actually this porn star sending it to him, right?

Right?

this is a destiel classic and i feel like anyone who isn’t new here has probably read it. but here’s your reminder that this is a great fic and you should (re)read it.

Wordplay by Dangerousnotbroken @dangerousnotbroken

“I don’t understand why talking dirty is such a big deal for you humans,” Cas complains, apropos of nothing.

it’s a “cas learning about sex” and also dirty talk, which are both things i’m really into!! and DNB is a genius so that’s even better.

if you enjoy these fics (and you should), please give the writer some love via kudos and/or comments. <3

ps - as always, if i didn’t tag the writer and you know their tumblr, please tag in the comments. i don’t think there’s a writer alive who wouldn’t be happy to be on a rec list. :)

#sharklist #sharkrecs

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incarnateirony · 5 years

Text

Optimism, Nihilism, Absence, Realism.

Alright, so I’ve got time for some real talk here.

By the title you’re probably expecting a meta, but that’s not really what this is. It’s time for a rare post laced with enough negativity to break my mold, but more congealing thoughts I’ve been banging on about in the background since I came to tumblr into a set of realities on my thoughts on the show at large.

Before this begins, this is absolutely not an invitation to come to my wall and start crowing and screeching about your ship, your characters, bagging on the authors or anything else. If you can understand the difference between constructive conversation, and prim word laced unbridled and pointless cynicism and complaining, you’re welcome to engage, but don’t mildew up this post.

But it’s about time we talk about the elephant in the room with the show. And despite this fandom’s gong banging, it isn’t Andrew Dabb. It isn’t MuH dEStiEl. It isn’t muh poor baby (fave char)

It’s SingerBuckLeming.

And I mean, in a way that’s obvious, and I really don’t think everybody has really, truly, wrapped their heads around it because they’ll still come yelling about Dabb whenever anything goes wrong.

But Dabb isn’t the one that’s been obsessed with a psycho dark godbaby story; Dabb’s the one that tried to at least craft it into something fruitful for TFW and subvert it into something more than burning bibles -- it’s SingerBuckLeming trying to relive the Lois and Clark fantasy they were denied.

It’s not Dabb that decided to hard push the AUverse story and all its attached splendors. The idea started as a one-off intro idea for Wayward, but it had to be pushed off a year, and Leming admitted to snaring the idea and, summarily, attaching it to their evil godbaby and making it their plot point.

It’s not Dabb that has an honest to god boner for Mark P and can’t shut his mouth up about him, that’s Eugenie too. It’s not Dabb that obsesses over half crocked characters like Asmodeus and Donatello. It’s not Dabb addicted to big shiny CGI and super saiyan powerups.

You’ll notice how many of these ideas are enmeshed into one giant ball of fuckery that, somewhere along the way, Dabb has tried to groom into having some sort of substance but there’s a very clear line going on here.

“How does this relate to my ship/my favorite character reeee”, why? Because with the amount of weight being tossed around via advantageous nepotism and a different core cluster in the author room quite clearly on a different creative page than everybody else, guess what -- everybody else gets railroaded.

And at times, yes, some presentations are becoming stressed and stretched. They only way to even bring any sort of emotion to the content is by retreading or exaggerating emotional roads, especially at the end of seasons. A season starts strong, and poetic, and then somewhere around or right after episode 14 everything starts fucking falling apart, often with one or two disjointed episodes in advance but strong character driven arcs. Traction and motion are lost. Poetry starts falling into pieces. Superpowers and over the top manpain become the leading thing.

This happens every year, and this year is more vivid than last. I do remind people that the last time we had SingerBuckLeming throwing their weight around on decisions so hard they double-directed-and-wrote an episode was Dark Dynasty, which the rest of the author room was uncomfortable with, even argued about, even lost author heads in the aftermath of. Guess what - we just got our second episode like that. The attempt to work into this weight-throwing by the rest of an author room tends to turn into a lack of cohesive storytelling. S10 turned into a rapid degredation into a benny hill chase for a book. This year - well, shrug.

That’s not to say I agree with every piss and moan about characters being “OOC” as often, in this fandom, the fandom’s idea of “OOC” ends at “things I don’t personally like”. There are differences between OOC and just not really... belonging in the moment. Because they’re often things the character has in their range of potential action, but whether or not the story is cohesively meshed in a way that’s worth a damn is a WHOLE other topic.

And this has just gotten worse. As the writing room gets newer and younger and SingerBuckLeming age older and older -- some of you may have remembered my panic attack realizing BuckLeming were being seated in position to become the next showrunners and Bobo had been bumped back. At the time, even meta bloggers I trust held different opinions that, frankly, I considered daydreamy “Oh don’t worry BuckLeming only handle this but all of the emotional stuff goes through Dabb co” but no, once BuckLeming get their hands in enough of that, the rest ends up on a railroaded crash course everybody is trying to write around to deliver as better than a doggie doo bag.

And I think, honestly, J2M know that. I’m sure a huge amount of their decision was indeed about family time, but the real question is, looking at this show that SingerBuckLeming have been aggressively railroading off a damn cliff while everybody tries to compensate, is it really WORTH negotiating more family time, do they really WANT to wait for it to crash out, do they really WANT to let Eugenie Leming run the show out of gas in the middle of a desert with hew new, bestest idea once Dabb inevitably leaves and she and her baes get full reign to make the endless Lucifer clone fleet and their godbaby powers all going super saiyan? Is that what they want their legacy to be, or would they rather go home, and be with their family instead of propping this up as it continues to veer to the left?

I keep praying SBL disappear for the final season, kinda like Singer buggered off in S11. And it’s kinda sad, because I do recognize that without Singer we wouldn’t have the show at all but somewhere along the way, he lost his nut, he lost his directing skills, he lost common sense and he let his seniority get to his head, probably in tandem with bringing his wife back in and getting to be a power unit which is just WOEFULLY unadvised to be honest.

This is so far beyond how anyone’s ship or favorite character is treated. It’s about the internal war in a writing room that’s as clear as plain day that’s causing a deterioration of the show that Dabb has DESPERATELY been trying to curtail into SOMETHING of note only to catch shit from people who can’t do a little bit of common denominator searching into events even before his showrunning time that just keep getting louder.

Right now I’m at a point where I’m just begging for cohesion and emotional worth from the final season. For something that BuckLeming aren’t just throwing off the cliff like a sacrifice to their new, bigger, dumber idea once S14′s Jack Course reaches its cap. And honestly, I’d hope that’s everyone’s primary concern rather than circular bitching about whatever element they’re hyper fixated on because this is an issue that spreads well and far beyond whatever singularity you choose to scream about. And most people just blind sweep in rage at the first name that’s easy to pick out that they feel is responsible. But this has been going on. FOR YEARS. It’s just getting louder.

I try to not be negative about the show in general. I do appreciate Dabb, Berens, Yockey, Merecuda, and to some extent Perez (though I still hold he’s the least artistic of that bunch.) I’m still in love with Sgriccia and Wright and Showalter. I still love this crew. But I’ve never been shy about pointing out BuckLeming problems and at this point, it’s just THE problem, to whence nobody is even realizing where they need to set their sights and complaints at. Everything else is an emotional or continuum casualty in their fuck offs to the new shiny idea. Or, in cases of the Lois & Clark godbaby, their old AF tarnished idea.

Some people may remember me saying that without Dabb converting Jack into being a TFW mirror for catharsis, Jack’s only individual arc is that of a villain, and here we are swinging around full force with BuckLeming sinking in, waiting to see how Dabb may subvert that in the final episode.

“I’m losing faith in Destiel” “I’m mad about Sam/Dean/Cas” “This plot is dumb” ultimately all fall down into the same goddamn railroading that habitually, like clockwork, louder each year, fucks up the end of a season and I just want them to disappear before the final season, but I doubt I’m going to get that. Maybe, just maybe, they can be staved knowing they won’t need the new ultimate escalation to carry on the show yet-again. Fingers and toes and arms crossed.

That said, this vivid repeat of S10 author room shift should also, hopefully, give at least some potential hope to meta authors who at least remember that S11 was recoverable and was in fact recovered, and also had final season plans afoot. It was on the table, at least, in thought in early concept, just not without the true bang announcement to promise it through. So I’m going to hold out some hope that this is going to shape up fine in the end.

But don’t expect me to humor your bitter bitching about your ship or favorite character of choice. You wanna bitch about the strokes Singer seems to have had that have stripped his directorial gifts, or Eugenie’s obsession with SSJ archangels and Mark P, by all means. They’re major culprits in everything else being flattened on the way with an author room y’all are bitching at trying to make it at least vaguely cohesive.

I’m a natural optimist experiencing distinct nihilism at the absence of any sort of respect for the show or J2M going on with SBL right now, and as ever a realist looking at it in the frame of what’s going on beyond our surface level issues, and what I can hope to maintain to roll back around to the optimism part. Ouroboros. Hopefully ending at the start of the journey and not to loop back through the nihilism by next season.

Can they just retire? Please?

Dump Mark P. Dump Donatello. Hell, dump Jack at this point with as much as they’ve fucked that off again. Dump the AU. Dump the Drama Coffin. Dump the instaboop angels. Just dump all of their dumb ideas and let the final season roll out without the resulting tire fire of all of their ideas and suddenly, the show is infinitely cleaner. Don’t think this is all their bullshit? Literally follow their episode impact in reverse the last few years before you come at me. It’s literally all their bullshit.

I really don’t give a shit about fandom drama around Mark P’s opinions. I get it, but I don’t care. What I care about is his unwillingness to look at his character and refuse a contract for any sort of integrity, doing literally anything to pull a goddamn paycheck out of milking this show. His character, formerly one of the most inspiring renditions of an overshadowing idea of good and evil and biblical scale, has turned into a toddler throwing tantrums on the floor of mcdonalds, begged for redemption that underscores the entire point of the hero’s journey, splattered in remnants of Hallucifer that wasn’t even the original character, and just won’t go away.

And antis can say what they want about, say, Misha or Castiel, but his character at least has a solid direction, and growth, and a real hero’s journey. It’s not just vomit splatter on the wall of whatever he can be niched into like Not!Lucifer. Mark S at least had the dignity to leave when he saw shit degrading for his character.

Oh yeah a lot of that was BuckLeming too. The plotholes in Crowley’s story he called out were BuckLeming, who summarily pitched Rowena. And I love Rowena and Ruthie and wouldn’t undo it for the world but GODDAMN am I glad Yockey basically adopted her. She was turned into something past their basic dumb ideas and, as of yet, BuckLeming has yet to unravel that like they’re proactively doing with Jack after Dabb and co put so much effort into him.

Like literally the fandom’s collective bitchfits have a very common denominator and nobody’s willing to suss out why.

SingerBuckLeming seem to have had a collective stroke and still think they’re creating for Lois & Clark in the 70s and not Supernatural as made manifest into absurdity by 13.23; and several people like Mark Pellegrino refuse to have the basic decency to say, you know what, pass. I had my show here, it’s been good. They feed it. But it still falls back to SingerBuckLeming in the end at the heart of it.

Not enough for you? Still think it has nothing to do with J2M or Mark Sheppard’s choices? Don’t even just listen to the scalding tea, look at the post-engagement between Jensen and Mark S.

youtube

They need to go away.

#supernatural #negativity #realism #buckleming #singer

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justice-for-shayla · 5 years

Text

A Union We Can’t Understand Part 12

A/N: Surprise! Insomnia hit real bad so I just knocked the rest of this out.

Warnings: Abusive relationship mention, unsafe train behavior, Sad content

Word Count: 1590

Tag List: @xoa-lex, @augustjosephine, @yasmincross, @ntrovertnleathernlace, @itsme690, @onexlittlespark, @sunflower-borhap-boys, @ramimami @destiel-stucky4ever-loki-queen, @rami-malek-trash

They stayed on the train for a few hours, but when he saw a sign for Montgomery, Snafu told Abigail it was time to get off.

“Thought we just did that,” She said with a small smile.

He pulled her into a kiss, lingering there for a moment even though they were getting closer to the station and would have to run or risk getting caught without a ticket.

After they parted, Abigail looked around the car until she selected a suitcase out of the piles around them. She rummaged for a moment and then held up a dress. “Looks like it’ll fit, right?”

He shrugged. “Close enough.” He didn’t question the stealing-- he’d stolen enough shit in his life that he couldn’t judge-- but he wondered if she’d explain herself.

“She won’t even know it’s missing until she gets where she’s going,” Abigail said. “I need it right now.” He watched as she discarded her dusty, wrinkled dress on the train floor and pulled the fresh one on.

“Looks nice,” He said, wondering how long it would be until he could see this one on the floor too.

Abigail seemed to realize what he was thinking, but she only smiled. “So, have you ever jumped off a train before? Because this will be a first for me.”

It would be a first for him too, but there was no reason to tell Abigail that. “It’s easy. Just wait till we slow, then jump.”

“Right. Easy.” She rummaged around in another bag for a moment, pulled out a small makeup case and tucked it under her arm. “Alright, I’m ready.”

She was fearless, jumping easily off the train and landing almost gracefully on the gravel underneath them. He landed next to her, more roughly which he quickly blamed on the pack throwing off his balance.

Together, they made their way towards the station where they attempted to blend into the crowd and look as normal as possible. Abigail went into a bathroom and returned moments later. She had applied the makeup to cover the bruises and cut on her face, which would hopefully help them blend in a little better

“I know a place where we can go,” Snafu said, “But it’ll take us a while to get there.”

Abigail shrugged and smiled. “I’m not in a hurry. There’s just one thing I’ve got to do before we go.”

He followed her out of the station and onto the street where she looked around for a moment before darting across the street and into a shop. Reluctantly, he joined her in the store, which was covered wall to wall in stuff. Old books were stacked on top of aging desks and tables while cases full of watches, jewelry, and other valuables crowded every available surface.

“Got something to sell?” An old man said, his voice thick with age and worn down from all the smoke he’d inhaled. He was still puffing on a cigar as he watched them. “Or are you here to buy?”

“Selling,” Abigail said with confidence. “This.” She slid the ring off her finger and handed it to the man.

He made a show of inspecting it. “I can give you fifteen.”

Abigail snorted and took the ring out of his hands. “I know it’s worth more than that. I’ll just take it back to the place around the corner.”

Snafu watched in awe as the man scrambled to stop her. “Wait now, young lady, that doesn’t have to be my final offer. I could go up to… twenty five?”

“Forty.”

“Thirty, that’s final.”

“Thirty five.”

“Now what part of final--”

“Thirty five,” Abigail said. Snafu stepped forward to stand beside her, but she hardly seemed to need his help.

The man rolled his eyes and looked at Snafu. “No wonder she’s selling the ring, I wouldn’t marry her either, no matter how pretty she is. Fine, thirty five it is.”

“It was a pleasure doing business with you,” Abigail said with a charming smile as she took the cash he offered. “Have a nice day.” She linked her arm with Snafu’s and they left the shop and started making their way towards the bus station.

***

Snafu didn’t tell her much about where they were going, but Abigail didn’t ask as they sat on the bus that was taking them there. She would have gone anywhere in the world as long as it was with him and away from Davis.

The ride was slow and bumpy, but Abigail managed to fall asleep on Snafu’s shoulder as the bus made its way out of Montgomery. They would be on it for a couple hours, and she needed the sleep. Every time she closed her eyes felt like making up for all the months of half-sleeping while knowing that Davis could come into her room whenever he wanted.

When she woke up, they had made it to the Mobile bus stop, and Snafu grabbed their pack as they climbed off. He stopped to speak for a moment with a man in the station, and then headed out, walking confidently down the street and towards the outskirts of the city.

“Sorry about the walk,” He said. “Hate to make you do it, but I don’t know how else to get there.”

Abigail shrugged. “I don’t mind. It’s not smart to waste money on a taxi anyway.”

The further they got from the town, the larger the houses became. Snafu seemed to know exactly where he was going, despite having received his directions a while ago.

“Where are we going?” Abigail asked, sure that they would have to get by all these big fancy houses before they found Snafu’s friend.

“It’s not far now. The man said we’d know it by the big gate and the old oak tree in the yard.”

That didn’t seem all that different from all the other enormous houses with their fences and ancient trees, but she didn’t argue with Snafu as they continued their long walk.

Finally, they stopped in front of an open gate leading to a long drive. “Just a little further, Darling,” Snafu said. “You alright?”

She smiled. “I’m fine. Can’t wait to get out of this heat though.”

They walked together up to the house, which was almost terrifyingly large. There was no way that big front door would open for the likes of them. Abigail was intimidated enough that she hung back as Snafu stepped up to the door and knocked.

A moment later, a man emerged, his dark red hair mussed and nearly falling into a pair of large, expressive eyes. He took in the two of them for a long moment.

“Shelton, I swear to Christ, if you kidnapped that girl--”

Abigail stepped forward and smiled, holding out her hand. “I’m Abigail Lawrence, and he didn’t kidnap me.”

He took her hand and shook it gently. “Eugene Sledge. Come on in.”

Stepping inside the house was like walking into the library Abigail had frequented as a child. She immediately felt like she ought to be quiet or else a pinched-faced old lady was going to pop out of one of the many rooms and tell her to hush.

“Y’all want anything to drink?”

“No, thank you,” Abigail said, despite being very thirsty. This damn house had her feeling like she should be on her best manners and not inconvenience anyone.

“Something strong,” Snafu said, dragging a hand through his hair. “It’s been a long day, Sledgehammer.”

The smile that crossed Eugene’s face was sweet and affectionate, and just a little bit sad. Abigail had the sudden urge to apologize as she looked at him, though she couldn’t have explained why.

After he’d handed Snafu a bottle of whiskey, Eugene gave them a tour of the house and pointed out rooms for them. Neither she nor snafu commented on the fact that they’d been given different rooms, though Abigail hated the thought of spending the night alone.

“My parents are gone for the week, but you’re free to stay as long as you like. Might have to come up with some story for them.” His eyes flicked to Abigail’s bruises, but he looked away politely when she caught him.

“We won’t stay long,” Snafu said quickly. “Just needed to get back on our feet, make a new plan.”

He nodded. “Well let me know if I can help.” WIth that, Eugene shuffled off, looking a little lost, a ghost haunting his own house.

Snafu watched him go and turned back to Abigail. “You alright?” He pulled her into a hug that she fell into gratefully.

She nodded. “Yes, just tired.” For all she’d slept on the bus, she couldn’t quite shake her exhaustion.

“Get some sleep.” He bent down and kissed her, long and promising. “I’ll check on you later.” Something in his voice suggested more possibilities than his words implied.

***

Snafu took the whiskey and joined Eugene on his front porch to watch the sunset. “Sorry we had to bust in on you.”

Sledge shrugged. “Not a problem.” He reached out and took the bottle without looking at Snafu.

Nudging him with his shoulder, Snafu attempted a smile. “Something going on?”

“No.”

Even Snafu could tell that this silence was an awkward one. “Look, I know I have to thank you for--”

“You don’t have to thank me. It’s nothing.” He paused for a long moment, staring out into the distance. “Just promise one thing.”

“Anything,” Snafu said easily.

“This time when you leave, say goodbye.”

#snafu x reader #snafu shelton #Snafu Shelton x Reader #snafu shelton imagine #merriell snafu shelton

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amwritingmeta · 6 years

Note

While I enjoyed reading your "Michael the Truth Bringer" meta, your diverging from canon was distracting and ultimately render a chuck of your analysis invalid. Not surprisingly with Destiel fans who have the habit of ignoring canon in favor of fanon. For example, it's Sam who longed for a home and family. In his own words, everytime he tried to set up a home, it gets destroyed or taken away. Dean is a born leader, not Sam, Sam had to learn to be a leader from Dean.

Hello, my dearling!!

I get the saltiness in this comment and I’ll take the Destiel-fan slur and turn it from a frown into an upside down cake, you know one of those you make in a frying pan and then you put it in the oven and then you turn it right way up and hopefully there’s a pretty pattern of fruit and it’s all syrupy and yummy?

Here’s the pattern (I’ll try my darnedest) -->

Canon: the text before us, in this case the show as a whole

Fanon: everything outside of canon text (but rooted in canon text) introduced in fandom and beyond

My meta is not canon text. My meta, by definition, is adding to the fanon library of interpretation of the canon text. Any analysis that is introduced by anyone who is not the actual content creator diverges from canon text, but by that same token you telling me that I’m ignoring canon in favour of fanon makes no sense to me at all.

Let me clarify, now that I’ve told you the difference between canon and fanon, that what I believe you’re trying to tell me is, in fact, that our way - yours and mine - of viewing canon diverges significantly in how we read Sam and Dean as characters.

Here come the syrup, yeah? Which is my reading of the canonical relationship dynamic of Sam and Dean. Making my reading part of fanon any way you twist and turn it, but it’s still rooted in my understanding of how they are presented to us in canon -->

Sam has always been the stronger brother. He’s always had an easy confidence about him because in many ways he’s felt at ease with who he is as a person. He knows his likes and his dislikes. He’s a bookworm and a nerd and he doesn’t mind those labels because, unlike Dean, people telling Sam who he is has never really affected him that much. Judgement from people on the outside, or even from Dean, has never beaten Sam down the way that type of judgement niggles on Dean’s sense of self.

Sam left for college to hunt for a future, yes, but to my mind - as much as he truly loved Jess and might have built a life with her, absolutely - the reason he wasn’t allowed to, narratively speaking, is that it’s not where he ever really belonged, and he was lying to himself, because the real driving force for him leaving the hunter life behind was that he wasn’t ever allowed his own choices.

He broke free and reclaimed control over his own life when he left for college. That’s an incredibly powerful thing to do, to stand up to your father and brother like that, to know, in yourself, that whatever else is out there it has to be better and it has to be more than what you have now. Yeah? But that individuality came solely from his need to be rid of the overprotectiveness and being told what to do and how to think and behave.

In the pilot episode (where, of course, Sam is the protagonist because this was always meant to be his story, right?) Sam takes the lead in all things. He is a fantastic hunter. And, to me, one of the most significant truths we learn about Sam is that he is lying about his background to everyone around him. Most significant to me is that Jess - love of his life - doesn’t even really know who he truly is and what he can do. She doesn’t know about the realities of the world, the dangers. Sam is keeping all of that from her. Why? Because he just wants to be normal, right?

But he is running from himself, from who he truly is, and this is why he’s not allowed that normal, apple-pie life.

Who isn’t allowing it? The narrative. Sam goes on a journey that shakes up his understanding of himself. He wants to be normal? He’ll discover that he’s as far from normal as you can get, because he has demon blood in him and all that this entails. His idea of who he is and who he’s meant to be is uprooted completely in the first five seasons of the show, but his core traits never falter and they are what allow him to beat the devil, because he is - in his heart - good, and he has faith in that, however faltering that faith might be. He beats the devil and proves to himself, and to Dean, that he’s better than his past mistakes, however, the stint as soulless and all the horrors he committed I believe then serve to nullify the extraordinary feat of stopping the Apocalypse, once he’s back in himself, and his trust in himself never quite recovers.

Hence the dependency on Dean’s dependency on him. (I reiterate: my reading and feel absolutely free to disagree)

Ultimately, Sam’s long character journey, the way I see it, has all to do with how he has to face who he is, deep down inside, and accept the fact that he is a hunter, and much more than that he is a Man of Letters at heart, and he is his father’s son: a bookworm, and his mother’s son: an independent spirit and born leader figure, and only when he understands this can he secure the future that will actually make him happy and at peace. And that future is taking shape right now. *fingers crossed*

As for Dean teaching Sam how to be a leader: Sam has been looking up to Dean his whole life, yes. Dean has taken the lead in most things and Sam has followed Dean, until he didn’t want to anymore, until Dean’s propensity to take orders from their father without ever questioning him, his diehard idolisation of John and his inability to think for himself forced Sam to step away from him, leave him, to make his own way.

Sam fights the idea of staying with Dean for most of S1, until it’s Sam’s influence that finally makes Dean stand up to John and side with Sam. This is where the codependency takes its first fluttering breaths. Because Sam has only ever wanted Dean’s approval (Dean is almost more a father figure to Sam than John ever was) and add to that the fact that Dean admits to Sam that he just wants Sam to come back so they can be a family again. Dean needs Sam. Sam can tell that Dean’s more or less lost without him. (Dean’s identity is so closely tied to Protecting Sammy)

Dean’s reliance on Sam is then slowly morphed into an equal, though differently rooted, reliance in Sam, when Sam begins to make bad choice after bad choice for himself, hollowing out his trust in himself.

To my mind, all of TFW deal with a fear of powerlessness. And as much as Cas’ individual arc is a gorgeous parallel (in most ways) to Dean’s individual arc, there are many traces between Cas and Sam as well, though not as pronounced. Anyway, the canonical structure that these men operate within is gorgeous and wholly the basis of all of my analysis.

Naturally, my dear, you are absolutely free to take your own view, but as I wanted to demonstrate, and hopefully now have, my reading is based entirely in the canon text, granted it is the canon text as I see it, which does not make a single word I put down actually canonically viable.

What I mean to say is that it’s always good to question everything, no matter what it is you’re reading. My meta is entirely based in my reading of the narrative as a whole, which means that my meta is entirely a reflection of my opinions, and naturally that doesn’t mean that I’ve aligned my opinion to match perfectly the original intent of the actual creator, because that would be nigh on impossible for anyone to do.

Make sense?

Thanks for the comment. I’m glad you enjoyed the 14x01 post until you felt it no longer kept in time with your opinions. It is the way it often goes with these things and I appreciate you giving me a chance to tell you my side.

#answered asks #canon #fanon #winchesters #sam winchester #dean winchester

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mittensmorgul · 7 years

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My boyfriend admitted yesterday after finally watching 13.1 that Dean and Cas DO love each other. He has no doubt in his mind that if Cas were female, Destiel would have happened. BUT he sees Dean as straight and doesn't believe anything could happen with Cas in Jimmy's body. I told him that this is heteronormative bi erasure and that as a bisexual, I find it offensive that he makes that assumption. What if these sorts of casual viewer opinions keep Destiel from ever happening? I'm losing hope.

Hi there! And congrats to your boyfriend for seeing the love there. :D

First off, no offense to straight dudes, but the straight dude I’ve been married to for 20 years has absolutely no sense of bifi. Or gaydar. I mean, if he sees two dudes kissing at Pride he’d pick up on it (and there are a few famous people who came out that he wasn’t surprised at all about– George Michael, Rob Halford, he was shocked that anyone was shocked…), but when it comes to closeted bisexuals who deliberately do not want to be detected, especially the way Dean performs dudebro heterosexuality as well as Dean does especially in early seasons, he just has no clue.

*insert that gif of Sam telling Dean he’s overcompensating*

The things about Dean that have been screamingly obvious because I relate to them from personal experience just don’t register to a straight dude who has never once questioned his sexuality (like Sam, for instance). To a person who has experienced it first-hand, a lot of Dean’s behavior reads as signal flares as bright as day. If it were only used for the occasional joke, or rare random things that didn’t fit into a much larger pattern, or if it were just enough to make me sit up and notice once or twice a season, I’d assume it was just a coincidence. But… it’s not a rare random occurrence. It’s something we see in nearly every episode, more and more blatantly as the seasons progress.

I tell everyone to read this:

http://destielhiseyesopened.tumblr.com/post/102023741956/slash-and-subtext-series

It’s a lot to read, yes, but it’s incredibly thorough and the sort of thing your neck will be sore from nodding along in agreement the entire time. :P

As for whether or not the show will go there, which NONE of us can say for sure, the one thing I can say for sure is that it will not be casual viewer opinions that will influence Dabb’s storytelling. He’s said it multiple times, that he’s going to tell this story his way, whatever that might mean in the end. Dude’s not telling. I mean, look at him:

So while it’s great to have hope, because we DESERVE representation in blatant and clear terms, there is no guarantee that we will actually GET it. I mean, that is a very real possibility. It’s why I personally don’t watch the show with any expectation for ANYTHING, you know? Then every new hint that they are taking this somewhere is a pleasant surprise. For me, watching from the standpoint that I EXPECT a certain outcome is just not an enjoyable way to live. It’s just too much to stress about.

And as I’ve said over and over again, just like Dabb, I personally couldn’t give a flying fuck with the mysterious “general audience” sees when they watch the show. I watch because of what *I* see in the show, because I like analyzing the story, writing meta (with the friendly reminder that “meta” has exactly zero to do with predicting the future of the story… that’s speculation, and aside from being able to read obvious twists and turns in near-future plot points, or understanding general character development arcs and where they could potentially be headed in vague general ways, I DO NOT ENJOY SPECULATION, especially when it involves the sort of detail that a lot of more casual fans seem to expect of meta writers. I AM TIRED OF FOLKS HAVING THE IMPRESSION THAT SPECULATION AND POSITIVITY FOR THE FUTURE OF THE SERIES AND CHARACTERS IS “”””META”””” BECAUSE IT ABSOLUTELY IS NOT.

Sorry for yelling, I needed to put that out there. Comments of “I love your meta!” when referring to headcanons and speculation about endgame destiel is just… missing the entire point. The meta is the long academic character analysis, the comparisons with the current arc to past canon, the examination of episodes THAT ARE ALREADY PART OF CANON. Looking to the future to make guesses about what COULD happen in the future is SPECULATION. NOT META.

I’m so tired of people who do not understand that giving meta writers hate and dismissing EVERYTHING we’ve written because a “prediction” didn’t come true on the show exactly as someone wrote it… A guess of what will happen in the future that doesn’t quite pan out doesn’t invalidate all the ACTUAL meta we’ve all written over the years. Because just like pr is not showrunning, speculation isn’t meta.

*even when the speculation is attached to the bottom of a really long meta post. The speculation bit isn’t the tl;dr of the post. it’s the interesting and fun little bonus bit after you’ve consumed the factual part of the analysis. It’s the little blop of whipped cream on top of the pie that is the actual important content. It’s mostly decorative and just a bit of fun.*

Thanks, this has been a meta writer PSA.)

The point of all that is that none of us have a crystal ball, none of us have some secret insider information into Andrew Dabb’s brain. Despite the fact that we’ve been watching his storytelling over the last 8+ years (yes, he’s been writing for the show since s4, and has written more episodes of Supernatural than any other writer, so we have A LOT of history to look over, not to mention all of s12 and the back ~third~ at least of s11 after he silently took over the showrunning from Carver to look at when trying to understand his pet themes and how he writes), the best we can do is make educated guesses.

I’m not basing my hope for canon on some ability to read the future, I’m basing it on MY ability to look at the entirety of extant canon and be objectively logical about where the story started, where the story is NOW, and as far as individual character development arcs based on having watched them all evolve over twelve plus seasons already…

Well, let’s just say that for *me,* I can see the characters have been on a logical emotional progression over the course of the entire series (that would be the “meta” part of things). As new canon unfolds, and characters continue to develop and interpersonal storylines continue to evolve… here’s a metaphor. The writers are walking the characters down a long hallway with loads of doorways open to potential future development arcs. As they walk past each doorway and don’t veer off course, it’s like they’re closing off logical possibilities to detour into alternate routes. They’re slamming and locking those doors up forever. The closer we get to the end of canon (in whatever nebulous future that the series will reach its end, and NONE of us know when that will be right now), the fewer doorways are left to walk past, and the less logical any detour from what looks (again, from reading the meta and looking back at the entirety of past canon) like the steady progression of development would be.

Does that make sense? I mean, they’re writing themselves into a corner (or into the end of the hallway where there’s only going to be one last exit door to walk through). But again, as long as there’s still hallway ahead of us, they could take an “easier” route or just decide to stop walking altogether and just sort of set up camp at their current point in character development. It wouldn’t really be sensible for the STORY as it stands right now for them to do either of these things, because if they start backtracking looking for a different door the entire narrative falls apart. Whatever they do, they must keep writing forward.

*stops and scrolls up and cries a lil bit at how much I wrote*

Point is, we just don’t know. I’m hopeful, I feel like we DESERVE to be seen and this love story absolutely DESERVES canon acknowledgement for what it is, and that every sign in past canon and every sign the writers are continuing to carry on down this hallway is pointing to it happening at some distant point in the future… but as of right now none of us have any idea what that eventual resolution will look like. What even is canon?

I mean, your boyfriend said he sees that Dean and Cas love each other. Is that canon? What would “qualify” as being legitimately canon? I love @bluestar86′s spec post about how easy it would be to make Dean’s bisexuality textually canon, but I have no idea if we’d ever get an episode stating it so blatantly. We might, though. We did have Dean asking a gay married couple what it was like settling down with another hunter…

The point is, even trying to speculate on what will happen in the future– especially something so unknowable and distant as “endgame,” is honestly impossible. We have no idea what will happen in canon between now and then in specific terms. In the meantime, I’m perfectly content to point and flail at what is actually happening in canon right now and paying exactly zero attention to what “casual viewers” think they’re watching.

I know exactly what I’m watching, and I love it.

Will they ever make it undeniably obvious and clear in canon? I mean, it is undeniably obvious and clear to *me* but everyone has their own personal biases and wishes and checklists of things they feel must happen, and no matter if the series ends with Dean and Cas getting married there will still always be people who deny it was “enough” to make their relationship obvious, you know? I just… don’t have the energy to deal with that level of denialism. It just stresses me out to worry about what “endgame” might look like specifically when as far as we know, “endgame” isn’t even on the table yet.

So by all means, if you can, take that small step back and try and enjoy the continuing story, and don’t put too much stock in anyone’s opinion of what may or may not happen in the future. But most of all, don’t put much much stock in what random straight dudes in the general audience think. Because Andrew Dabb doesn’t. :P

Wow okay that turned into a treatise…

#spn meta meta #revenge of the subtext #the destiel #destiel #the scheherazade of supernatural #carasauruswrex #this is an andrew dabb appreciation blog (except when it comes to car stuff)#dabb vs cars

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beenote-blog1 · 6 years

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hello i'm the frustrated d/c!anon of that post you reblogged and i just wanted to say thank you for sharing those wonderful tags. "we deserve those amazing epic stories too" we do, we do. saving to look at again when i need a reminder of all the good people who are in this together, of the good things that came out of this in spite of where it has gone and where it might end.

anon, i’m sorry it took me a little while to respond to this. this is really thoughtful & sweet and i’m immensely touched that my sort of random tag rambling can serve as a little comforting reminder when the feelings get overwhelming or shipping is just a lot to handle. ♥

more accidental long rambling you probably didn’t want behind the read-more because I talk a lot

In your original message, you mentioned not having a lot of people to talk to who can understand caring so much and I relate so very much to that. I have some people who will listen to me talk it out, but they don’t really understand just how much it /means/ to me - especially when I’m feeling worried or crushed by it. Like you, intense level of reaction I’ve had to d/c had me questioning why exactly it was causing so many intense roller-coaster feelings and after thinking about it for awhile, I realized how starved I’ve been for their exact sort of epic friendship/romance story; but one which (finally) reflects (and has the potential to further reflect) some of my own experiences with dealing with my sexuality and even my own romantic experiences [okay, obviously nothing so epic in my own romantic experiences, but there’s enough there to go “yes, yes, exactly” and the rest is “this is the ideal story, who wouldn’t fall in love with this?”]. Destiel is very much what I cleave to in romance and in storytelling and it speaks to me beyond just a ship. It’s the type of story that’s always spoken to my soul [far reaching and life changing and full of love and hope and at the same time, saturated in a bit of pain and tragedy], the kind of story I’ve always sought out. I mean, of course, the dream is finding a story that could even further reflect those things & the experiences of my life and give me /more/ of the sorts of stories I’m hungry for, but the search is long and arduous for all of us and destiel has been the kind of story so many of us can carry with us and again, god, don’t we deserve those stories? the kind we carry with us?

A big part of that, as well, is that I think d/c is sort of…wide open in a way? People with a lot of different experiences and forms of identity can find themselves reflected in d/c. Look at all of the different ways people relate to and identify with Cas.

and this is getting rambly/off track but I also think there’s a lot to be said for the ways dean and cas and their relationship highlights the lines of friendship and romance that lgbtq+ people experience and struggle with in their own unique ways. Plus, we just really want to feel like we can see ourselves in those starcrossed / will stretch across the universe and time / can survive the worst challenges type of romances and that’s fair. It’s understandable. (Those are the types of stories that have been capturing the hearts of people for ages, why wouldn’t they capture ours?) I’m not saying there aren’t canon lgbtq+ ships that aren’t out there trying to do the same and I work really hard to support them, but it doesn’t erase what destiel has meant for me and I imagine, for many others. Even with representation increasing in media, people are still struggling to find things that speak to them and it’s going to take a long time still before there’s enough representation and enough to choose from that people can find these types of stories more readily (hopefully ones which will follow through/become canon/and aren’t troubled by all of the terrible things we’ve had to deal with, with d/c). So uhm, I think, just knowing there’s a beautiful story like deancas that doesn’t have to be a strictly a straight romance and that has been unfolding slowly and so organically - even if large parts of it have had to be done in fandom - and that has been a story ripe for inspiration and a place for people to come and feel hopeful / explore a beautiful story/ themselves/ find happiness, that’s impactful. I think it appeals to a wide array of people and it speaks to something essential in us. so, despite everything, it’s hard to just erase that from people’s minds and hearts.

Saying that; however, I also really understand and empathize with the issues people have with the ship and especially with the way it’s been handled (I also carry around a lot of those issues and struggle with them). I also can’t divorce myself from the power of what the ship has given me or what an impact it’s had and clearly, has had for many many other people. I think there’s a reason the ship has lasted as long as it has and that it has so many people who have continued to enliven it and shape it through art, writing, content, love, ect. - even when other ships are available. I know there are people who fetishize it, like all things, but a majority of people I’ve come across are people who have found a bit of themselves, their hopes, their love, and their desire for good storytelling in the ship and for me, that’s just so special. It doesn’t erase the terrible things either; though, which is why I think it’s important to talk about those problems and make an effort to support the stories and ships that do better, as well as to be vocal about where our lines are at. I really do understand the deep pain and struggle that comes with loving this ship, especially when we’re looking at the layers added on by being part of any marginalized community - we can’t separate from that, can we? Spn has been terrible at representation across the board, period. That baggage is inevitably added on to destiel and I don’t think it can be separated. I think it’s unfair to ever demand that anyone does.

@awed-frog, as always, has put it all much more eloquently than I ever could in most of her writing about destiel/spn, but again - I think we all have to make a choice about what we, personally, are willing to take from this. So much of the unfortunate reality of this ship has been laid out bare (the likely possibility it won’t go canon, the purposeful choice by the writers to put it in the subtext/partial text but not follow through, issues within the shipping community itself, on and on). For me, I’m in a place where I’ve cushioned myself to that reality and I’m willing to go through to the end being clear-minded about those realities (though it won’t hurt any less. it’s been a bit like preparing for someone to pass away.) I stick with it because I mostly take the best of the small things in canon to bring into my fandom space and when the show is hurting me or the cast or writers are hurting me, I take breaks and try to find more positive things to engage with. Right now, that’s just… what makes me okay/happy and it could change any time. they want to take from this show and that has included walking away for their own health and happiness and I just. fully accept and support that and understand why and I think it’s important to allow people a place to verbally work that out and support it (something I think some are doing really well with. people are hurting and it’s important to know there’s places we can go to not feel alone).

So, I keep reminding myself of where this struggle is coming from in the first place. I mean, I can’t think of many times in my life I’ve gotten /this/ emotional about a ship on a regularly, extended basis - and I’ve had a lot of special ones over the years. I think so much of it is wanting our own beautiful, reach-across-the-universe kind of stories (if… that makes sense at all). The truth is, they just aren’t easy to come by and we kind of got the terrible luck of this half accidental/half purposefully created one not being handled all that well. I like to hope that destiel will be one of the (maybe slightly failed) early prototypes to more epics that people will dive into the way we might dive into any one of those famous stories of love or adventure or sorrow that have stretched across generations and peoples, but with the representation so many of us are hungry for. And, I mean, how could anything be wrong with that, anon? I think that’s the most beautiful, human thing ever, to dream of that. So you’re super valid for those feelings and struggles regarding dean and cas. They’re special and I hope you can find a place where destiel won’t hurt you too much (even if that means trying to cope w/ the feelings and step away from it further and find better things or openly talking about it or crit writing about the show/raising awareness or writing it out or creating something even better, anything! any and all of those powerful ways of dealing). In the end, I think it’s a lot bigger than “just a ship.” People have got all sorts of desires and hopes and personal experiences tied into the stories we love. To me, that’s just… so beautiful? even when the world is sort of terrible at letting us have them.

I really hope we all keep going forward trying to create those stories ourselves and supporting those who can. Destiel can continue to be one of our great inspirations for future stories/romances/friendships. After all, people always need inspiration and oftentimes the things that don’t reach the heights we had hoped for are the sources for building and discovering something greater.

i wish you the best, anon. you aren’t alone. ♥ i’m happily always here if you would like an additional person to deancas feel at, but either way I wish you a lot of happiness in future ships/stories/creative endeavors/and fandom things. VwV

#i assumed public was okay but if not pls let me know and i'll take it down ASAP #destiel #ramblings #anon #i'm sorry i talk /so much/

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incarnateirony · 5 years

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Today I had a discussion with a Destiel fan that "hates SPN" (apparently that's a thing) and thinks that the writers, and Misha, are queer baiting. I said that Destiel is subtextually canon for years now, and that it seems that right they'll make it, what I called, "textually canon in a way that's undeniable". I also said that Misha dosen't bait anyone, and that if the writers ever did it feels like they aren't anymore, and instead are going further into Destiel. [1/2]

The discussion ended with them completely dissmissing all I've presented, and calling me out for not "respecting" their opinions.I feel tired.I think I'm starting to understand what you mean when you say you're done with their shit. I've considered telling them to check out your blog,since you explain things in a way that's like reality slapping people in the face with the might of Zeus,but I decided not to.The last thing I wanted to do was bring a "anti-like" Destiel shipper to your blog. [2/2]

Well, yikes.

Look, issues like this are... complicated. Like really, really complicated. People who, say, burned out during the early S9 wankoff have a completely different understanding. People weren’t crazy for reading it, but like I comment, there was so much flying around at the time on a production scale it was barely a twinkle in anybody’s eye they had barely even started to consciously poke. But people got worked up. People got hurt.

Add in that queerbait is a huge issue, but sometimes we uh... we fail to understand things like queer authors trying to give lgbt folks resonant content against restrictions, or pushing back against those restrictions and seeing how far they can go.

I’m endgame-positive; endgame-positive does not mean endgame-certain. It means that I see enough motion, intent, and direction in our writing room that doesn’t smack of aimless queerbait. Things are too interwoven, too cardinal to the story, too many poignant even sociopolitical incidents made as per the Dreamhunter ... thing. We are far past the reservation of “oops Anna sucks and Julie’s uncomfortable and Cas is popular let’s swap around their roles a bit to keep him around oops the series didn’t end oops I fired the wrong guy, oops, we gotta save the show - oops, oops, oops, oops.”

I won’t deny there was great chemistry or a few authors occasionally poked it, but it was so-often handled like a joke. There was so much slip and slide.

Other things happened I’m not going to get into that warrants some of the severely burnt feelings that happened after the S9 blowout but, like the change that happened then on a dime, it can be changed in reverse, and action speaks louder than some backlogged underscore note on a back draft page dropped once somewhere. I’ll leave that there. Please don’t send me an ask to clarify. I’m far too tired.

Their feelings are not invalid, but viewpoints can age very poorly. Similarly, bitterness breeds bitterness, and once embittered to an event that shocked them, they rarely want to open themselves up to it again.

There’s a lot of shit in play here: author intents and crew intents and statements made and reverse-reaches painted out as far as they can go, and network politics and long term resale value and it’s a hot mess, so 100% counting on it is also setting yourself up for heartbreak. But it’s also categorically unfair to assume all of the queer authors and LGBT specialists they’ve piled into here, with their theatrics and sociopolitical history, are just out here fucking around rather than doing as much as they can with what they have.

It’s complicated. It’s emotional. There’s no easy answer.

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