#spreadsheetsnatural
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13x20 was written probably about a year after the market research results came back which means destiel had been nixed for a while*
This is a story the writers have always wanted to tell.
* i am assuming cw execs weren't total idiots and told them no destiel before they started writing s13
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dabbnatural is literally my burden, my curse
but unfortunately i like the disease
#one part of spreadsheetsnatural is getting upgraded to smartsheetnatural or possibly even databasenatural#i no longer trust imdb since someone has been editing the credits on *old* spn eps
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gonna be misappropriating company resources to create a spreadsheetsnatural of not just the writers and directors for each spn ep, but also story editors, producers, etc since fucking apparently someone has decided to start fucking with the imdb credits and superwiki only has the writer and director for each episodes
#looking into how i can make it available in perpetuity for free so anyone else who wants it as a resource can have it#bc if i'm putting this effort in then i don't want it to be just for me#i think best free option is a new dropbox account and post the link to a new tumblr and then request it go in the web archive?
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sorry if you've already been asked this or have talked about this on your blog before, but are you still working on spreadsheetsnatural? it's ok if you aren't, I'm just obsessed with the market research lol it's given me permanent brainrot
kind of?? i ended up taking a turn down the left fork of the supernatural rabbit hole and ended up in dabbnatural/late seasons hyperfixation which also comes with spreadsheets. i don't know how much of it would be of interest to ppl tbh... it's just a lot of timeline events and source citation links. at this point i can remember most of it off the top of my head but i like to keep a quick reference.
#i also got really into compiling spreadsheets sourcing fandom rumors bc it's annoying how many 'facts' are unsourced#or fans are insistent on a certain timeline of events that just isn't provable or even directly implied#the source i've found for 'kansas was ready to go film' is more recent and told by the frontman as a broad strokes story#true facts: spn set shut down days before trudeau announced the border closure and it was more days before the closure went into effect#fandom 'fact': kansas the band was literally getting on the plane to vancouver when canada closed the border#'spn finale is 6min short' was my wakeup call - i didn't watch it for a while so i was taking folks' word for it and uh. it's provably fals#that ep is 42min just like every other ep. sorry but that one REALLY gets me.#sorry i know that answered like. nothing.#ask a brain problem
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I doubt this is going to gain any traction but it's highly likely that the CW choosing to hitch their star to Walker is what fucked them over and while what happened with Supernatural is really shitty, the schadenfreude is so good.
Wild speculation below; not 100% sure how coherent it is because it is A Lot.
Say you're the CW; you have old IP (cash cow that it is, it's aging and you want something fresh to maybe get your finances into the black) and decide that you're going to end it after a lengthy run and use it as a springboard for your new show. Because that new show is gonna star one of the actors from your older IP show and it's based off of a piece of nostalgia IP that is already owned by one of the joint owners of the CW (CBS owns W,TR). So there's no real acquiring any rights or paying for it, it's just sitting there ready to get a nostalgia reboot. You get the younger fans of spn and the older nostalgia fans. Instant hit, right?
Given that CW seems to be a poorly run shitshow I'm going to go out on a limb and say that their decision to go forward with Walker might have been partially based on the results of the destiel market research. This would be incredibly stupid because it's comparing apples to oranges but it sounds like they aren't the sharpest light bulbs in the drawer to begin with. I could see it happening pretty easily if the first discussions about a new show came close on the heels of the market research results.
So let's say you're the CW. You have spn creatives who want to have destiel greenlit. You (tbh sensibly) decide to do some market research knowing that you have very diverse AND divided audience demographics; you want to know how many viewers you might lose if you go forward with destiel. Results end up coming back that show it's likely going to impact your metrics poorly and so you kill the potential for canon destiel. At the same time, you're going to be looking for new shows (as you do).
We know the one fan's market research interview happened in Dec 2016, which means results of the research were likely presented to execs in early 2017. Walker was announced in late 2019. I would love to know when Walker was initially pitched and when it was decided that Jared would come onboard because that is heavily intertwined with the decision to cancel spn. (I don't believe Jared pitched Walker as a vehicle for himself, I think it must have already been on the network's radar given the nostalgia IP component. His interest might have reinvigorated the network's interest and pushed it in a certain direction.)
A new show is usually in development for 2 years from pitch to air, Walker was probably a bit less. The fact that CBS already owned the IP for the show would be a factor in that and since it was going to star Jared, it's probably why it was ordered direct to series without a pilot. He's already bankable and a proven draw, no need to hedge your bets. So while it's unlikely they made any solid decisions on Walker until 2018, they probably had the 2017 market research results in the back of their mind.
To go further out on the limb; if they have the results of the market research in the back of their mind as they're discussing a new show, maybe they decide to play it safe with a nostalgia reboot that then carries over a lead from spn who has a devoted following. They make sure the spn finale doesn't scare off the fan demographic they want to carry over to the new show and that it also definitively ends the old show. If they'd intended to have even an ambiguous destiel ending they would have been pushing a very different type of show as their follow-on. Since it takes years to go from pitch to air, this is a decision that was made before s15 was even being written.
And then they decided to give the queerbaiting one last hurrah. They use destiel to get eyes on the finale and therefore all the Walker promo marketing. But they also wildly underestimate how huge of a cultural impact Cas' confession is going to have. They have drastically miscalculated. They've now Icarused way too close to the queerbaiting sun and they have to double down on Walker... which gets crappy numbers and the CW continues to not turn a profit.
I actually don't think reciprocated destiel would have meant much for them in terms of a financial win (at best it would have been a net zero bc they'd have hemorrhaged one demographic while having to court a new one that they'd been tolerating but largely ignoring), but I do think hitching themselves to Walker was the final nail in the coffin. It's hilarious that going forward with Walker was such a risk averse decision that it ended up tanking spectacularly.
The hubris is truly delicious.
#one of my parents worked in marketing/market research for a network back in the 90s/00s and bc i was a kid i got a weirdly close view#of how the proverbial sausage is made when it comes to development of shows and how market research for them is done#i'm sure stuff has changed since then but the basics are unlikely to have changed#this is the kind of overarching thesis of what i'm trying to actually support with my spreadsheetsnatural project#spn#destiel#deancas#spreadsheetsnatural
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What is spreadsheetsnatural?
Spreadsheetsnatural is a project I started thinking about a few months ago and finally started working on recently. Its purpose is to create a timeline of what happened during the final season of Carver era (when Dabb would have been tapped for co-showrunner), all of the Dabb-Singer era of spn, the development timeline of W*lker and using all of that as a basis to speculate on how those factors potentially impacted the trajectory of s15/the finale/destiel. I'm trying to remain impartial as I gather info but I do have my own theories based on knowledge of the entertainment industry which I've posted about before.
The sheer quantity of information I'm looking at necessitated the creation of multiple spreadsheets (which is why I've called this spreadsheetsnatural) in order to keep track of the below information from 2015 through 2020.
Content of showrunner-written/significant (e.g. 15x09) episodes
Information we have available from the scripts and other supplemental materials that have been acquired
Official announcements
Info provided at cons/in press interviews and
"key" episode air dates
[Image: a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet of information about the supernatural series that includes episode air dates, network announcements, press materials and info from cons. All info is organized chronologically and color-coded by season. Citation links are included where applicable.]
That's only a partial screenshot of it and at a guess, this spreadsheet is maybe 10% complete. This partial screenshot is barely even a first pass based on the info I already have and I'm just starting the process of pulling more info from press materials and cons. I have no idea when I will finish this because of just how much info I'm looking for. If anybody has information that sounds like it might fit in with this please let me know! If you can provide a source that would be amazing (just who you think said it and a year/con is a great help!)
If you're interested in some other info I've already posted, everything is tagged on my blog as spreadsheetsnatural. If some of the posts seem a little unhinged, those are probably from the day I forgot to eat while doing research.
some additional explanation about what kicked off this project, what my spreadsheets are and what info I'm looking at below the cut
I'd post more spreadsheet screenshots but the rest are in pretty rough shape and need a clean-up/redo since I've added more factors I want to look at. The current spreadsheets that I have are:
"dabbnatural" - where it all started! all episodes written/co-written by Andrew Dabb; I'm now going to be adding additional sheets to the workbook to include his story editor credits and also his earlier producer credits (showrunners get producer credits by default)
"script hunt reference" - what it says on the box. a spreadsheet with all documents available from spn script hunt organized by season, episode, document type, revision date, original air date and writer (chronological by latest revision date)
"episode guide" - oof. this one I haven't started yet but at a minimum, this spreadsheet needs to contain every episode, writer, story editor, producer, director, air date seasons 10-15. I'd like to fill in back to s4 eventually.
"spreadsheetsnatural master" - compiling all relevant info into one timeline document
And after all that, you might ask why I started this insane project! Well, like many hellers I'm curious as fuck about what happened with s15, the finale, the confession, the lamp... I also have a relative who used to work in the entertainment industry (including network TV) on the marketing & market research side so I got a weirdly close look at how the proverbial sausage is made. The moment I heard there was market research, I was set down the footpath to this rabbit hole.
Short version of this in the tags but if you've made it this far: An actual investigative report on what happened would likely take years and a professional journalist or two with far better access than I, a person outside of the entertainment industry, will ever have. People are going to be under NDAs or unwilling to risk their professional reputations & careers over this and especially not just to talk to a curious fan. This is something that either a person in the industry needs to release with receipts or a journalist needs to hunt down. I am neither of those.
The people who are most responsible for this mishegoss are far higher up the food chain than any of us will ever have access to and I'd like to start assigning blame to them vs. actors.
#i just know i'm going to be making gantt charts like i'm doing my fucking job or something#an actual expose on this would likely take years and a professional journalist with solid industry contacts#this is just a fun fan project to maybe find some interesting links between things (kinda like stackednatural for research nerds)#spreadsheetsnatural#spn#destiel
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It's really the (and then.) direction in 12x12 that says it all
The pause, the elaboration. The market research results they would not yet have received when writing and filming this episode.
#the fan's interview was dec 2016 and 12x12 would have been pitched/written in the summer and likely filmed in dec/jan#execs likely didn't get the market research data until early in 2017 and i'd guess no earlier than feb just bc of holidays#even if that fan's interview was the last one there were the holidays and they'd need to compile data for execs and present#pure speculation but i'd guess they got the results in feb/mar at which point 12x12 was essentially done#i would wonder if it was later tho given how 13x01 and early episodes of s13 go like there is course correction on it#but there's also advanced thanatology so like... who knows#now that house stuff is a bit more sorted i will get back into#spreadsheetsnatural#destiel#spn#these tags are a little delirious and incoherent i'm insomnia rn
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A tasty morsel: 15x09 The Trap was co-written by Bobo Berens and Robert Singer and directed by Singer
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welcome to the master spreadsheet of spreadsheetsnatural!
still very much a work in progress (and i opted to start around the market research and then build in both directions) but so interesting to look at what was happening when. and the added info from the script drops really contextualizes things. like it isn't on here but from what i can see, episodes are pitched and approved to go to draft 5-6mo from the air date so like 4mo ahead of filming (this is very fuzzy math since you'll see some eps had much more revision time vs others)
#this is a combination of my spreadsheet compiling all the info on the script drops with the announcement dates cited on the wiki#i need to start pulling con info but i might need to tap other ppl to assist which i feel awkward about bc i cannot understand#con videos like 80% of the time bc i can't process wtf ppl are saying with the crosstalk and shit audio#spreadsheetsnatural
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Will you be posting your spreadsheetnatural in total? With accompanying graph or pie charts? With commentary and analysis? Any idea of completion estimate? Your musings have been very very interesting so far. (And will the spreadsheet date include all seasons?)
Hello! Yes, I will be posting everything I end up with that is actually intelligible. I currently have three Excel workbooks with multiple sheets of compiled information. I already know I'm going to need at least one more to track ALL episodes and not just Dabb-written ones (which is where my interest started).
My hope is to have what I guess I'd call "initial findings" in the first half of 2022 but also I have a day job (booo) that is going to be taking up A LOT of my bandwidth from now until May 2022. In terms of charts, I'll probably have one or two Gantt charts (horrifying, I do them like 1-2x/yr and have to re-learn it every time) and maybe some really subjective pie charts about destiel content. It's really more of a timeline to draw conclusions from (hence the Gantt charts) based on overlapping timelines and bc of all the info I'm working with, spreadsheets are the easiest way to keep track so I can filter/organize. I'll definitely be posting a written summary of everything and note what is relatively factual vs what I think we can glean from info vs bullshit conspiracies that there's no way to prove but are fun to think about!
For the whole spreadsheetsnatual project, my main "interest" is in looking at late 2015 to present which would be mid-s11 through s15 aka when Dabb would have been tapped as co-showrunner even if it wasn't immediately announced. I've dug into his credits on spn going back to when he started as a writer in s4 and while it's typical for people on shows to work their way up the ladder the longer they stay (starting as writer working their way up through producer titles) he has a lot of higher level producer credits during mid/late Carver era. He'd already been around for a while at that point but it is noticeable compared to others. (But also I think there was a pretty big writer shake up during Carver era with ppl coming and going. I need to dig into that a bit more. Being a fandom newbie means a lot more legwork!)
Dabb really made his career on spn sticking around rather than leaving and working his way up through multiple shows like some other early-era folks. He seems to have had a really solid career on spn and would've been very entrenched in the system having been around since s4. This is purely speculation but having been around that long, I think he'd have had the clout to come in as co-showrunner and ask that the network do market research on making Dean canonically bi.
And thank you for taking an interest in the whole spreadsheetsnatural project! At its core it's just me having a bad case of apophenia and making connections about things that may not actually be connected but it sure is interesting to dig into! I love making bullshit conspiracy theories but being able to halfway justify them even if I know they're probably bullshit lol.
#i know i sound unhinged but i've run some of my thoughts by ppl who aren't in the fandom and they've followed my logic easily#mostly about the dabb SDCC interview where he says 'it would be stupid if we did [everything bad in the finale] when wrapping up the show'#and that he so clearly calls out exactly what would be bad to do in a final season.... in an interview in july 2019#there's his comment about the GoT ending and ppl not liking the spn one also from SDCC and a sus article from feb 2020#where suddenly he's saying that the ending will be a satisfying wrap up but the writer never says if they actually met with him and when#it comes across as very C*W PR rather than dabb being interviewed just bc of how he's quoted but not sourced#it kinda feels like they're pulling from earlier interviews or something like that and just posting it later#BUT ANYWAY. that's enough conspiracy theorizing for now.#spn#destiel#spreadsheetsnatural#anonymous#ask a brain problem
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The Feb 2020 TV Insider article with quotes from Dabb continues to fry my brain with how out of place it and its contents seem to be like, wow I'm in full-on conspiracy mode over when they spoke with Dabb because it's such a short article and doesn't make reference to when they spoke with him or if they're compiling from other statements he's made. so now i have to hunt that down.
Also, the reference to there being a "Cas-centric" episode and saying it's in the back half of the season is odd to me like I guess that's referring to Gimme Shelter? Except that I think of Golden Time as the much more Cas-centric "episode [that] shows us the world through the angel’s eyes" but that's in the front half of the season which had already aired?? Cas and Jack are certainly featured heavily in Gimme Shelter but except for Cas' speech about fatherhood I don't really think of it as being an episode about seeing the world through his eyes? Ugh, I'm going to need to rewatch to see if I'm just misremembering.
I am actually going to be driven insane by spreadsheetsnatural and the placement of this one fucking article/interview in the timeline.
#i will NOT contact the writer of the article i am not in that deep.... yet#like was there a point in dec/jan where they thought they might actually be able to resolve everything cleanly? but then by the time#they were working on drafts and revisions to the finale in feb/mar that got scrapped?#if ever i get the chance to talk to either dabb or singer....#spreadsheetsnatural#spn#i feel like at some point i need to write an explainer on what spreadsheetsnatural actually is as a project
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i think if dabb met me he'd probably understand what the lead actors go through on a regular basis in terms of being put under a microscope by fans
#realized i need to make MORE dabbnatural spreadsheets bc he's a story editor on just as many eps as he wrote and some variety of#producer on 200 eps so like. he actually has had a LOT more impact earlier on than i originally thought#i will only be looking more closely at his producer/supervising producer credits since those are closer to writers vs administrative#and titles like co-executive/executive producer are more courtesy when you're showrunner (so it's more like 60 eps to look at)#i do find it interesting that he has very few co-writers after loflin and one of those is the finale with jeremy adams as story editor#who was a complete spn outsider before s15 except for co-writing scoobynatural (presumably bc his experience is writing shows like#hot wheels city. a whole shit ton of lego adaptations (one of which was lego scooby-doo) and dc properties)#just kinda interesting they brought in a total outsider to be story editor on the entire back half of s15#please follow me down the rabbit hole as i point out that rights to dc lego scooby-doo and hot wheels are held by wb and cw#is a joint venture by cbs and wb and cbs is the rights holder of the original walker texas ranger#spreadsheetsnatural#spn
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trust me i know this is wildly incoherent. i just need to get it out.
like i see everyone yelling about the market research tonight and yes! we're all in it right now! but i'm also over here with shit like "interview happened 6 dec 16 and results would not be seen until early/mid 2017 depending on how long the study was open which is why s12 goes all-in and then s13 massively course corrects" streaming out of my head ....and also trying to figure out if dabb is a heller or just into destiel for clout and profit bc that man took over as showrunner and was like GUESS WHAT.
or rather, found out he'd be teaming up with singer bc he does go in on the destiel in is s10&11 eps. which! dabb announced as co-showrunner with singer 14 may 16, almost certainly would have known decently ahead of that, 11x23 likely went to prod draft in feb/mar 16 but remember folks it is dabb-singer era
my brain is burning up with dates and details and i AM a fried egg
#i was kinda hoping to be able to drop a whole thing tomorrow in dishonor of 15x20 but i have to be in the office#bc i am solidly an adult and very much unhinged about spn#spreadsheetsnatural#spn
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i have spent an unreasonable amount of time on spreadsheetsnatural the past two days and i just gotta say there are some awfully tasty and compelling tidbits and i literally cannot be coherent about them right now. the taste of vindication made me forget to eat dinner.
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aaaaand... created a new spreadsheet in addition to the dabbnatural one to keep track of scripts and casting sides that we have
filling in season/ep/name/type/version first and then i'll be going into each doc to pull the rest of the info later. maybe someone else has done this work already but it's fun to hunt down for my own purposes and there's other notes info i need to pull for myself and i like having things organized the way they make sense to me in a searchable and sortable excel file
#yes i did in fact put him down as michael two queens. yes i am completely insane taking down all of this info.#i swear there is a purpose to all of this it's just a very dumb small potatoes purpose. i am turning this mole hill into a mountain.#spn spreadsheets#spn#spreadsheetsnatural
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No but like. Pitch to air on an individual episode of spn is (from what I can parse) roughly six months with a little bit more lead time for the first half of the season. Everything for s12 was mostly written and season's plot trajectory definitely decided before the market research was complete.
I would love to know when they started to discuss s13 like writers wouldn't have officially started working on writing the season before May/June but they must have had some idea given that Dabb-Singer era felt like it wanted to do a multi season story arc from pretty early on.
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