the very touch of you corrupts

[ever_neutral]

 i can't believe i am back engaging with fandom in the year of Satan 2020 because of Supernatural. 

so full disclaimer that I haven't actually watched the episode in question, or any episode of the show for many years lmao but i am highkey fascinated by the Politics behind television decisions and also, screaming that Representation Matters is literally what i do for a living. and it fascinates me that the powers that be behind Supernatural were trying to have their cake and eat it too by making the end of the series a Rorschach blob that seemingly satisfied no one. 

the facts are these:

1) after 12 years of baiting, they actually go all the way with having Castiel come out and declare that he's been in love with Dean all along (then immediately kill him off)

2) even though Dean appreciates that Castiel's sacrifice has allowed him (Dean) to keep on living and embrace life, the show very shortly afterwards kills Dean himself off. they don't give him the spouse and kid/s and picket fence they give Sam's character - which they very well could have done, and still have had the brothers in Heaven ending. rather than confirming any endgame love interest instead they leave Dean blatantly single before he kicks it and ends up in Heaven, and then... 

3) they make the (bare minimum) effort to establish that Castiel has been lifted out of hell (or whatever) and is back in Heaven as well

4) but they DON'T finish what they started with the coming-out, they do not show Dean and Cas meeting again onscreen. which, after previously confirming that this relationship was canonically built on romantic tension all along, would have been the #1 buzz no matter how ambiguous the interaction.

5) by leaving out this onscreen reunion AND not showing an endgame romantic partner for Dean, they manage to avoid saying the final word on Dean's sexuality, full stop. therefore avoiding heat from conservative homophobic general audience members and network censorship equally.  


the upshot is that this is apparently the closest thing to a Destiel endgame the show could have done, and i wonder if that was a real factor in the above writing choices. you might want to think that i'm reaching, but you also have to think that they DID NOT HAVE TO canonise Destiel at all. they could have written Cas out in a generic heroic sacrifice, like they apparently did many times before, rather than CONFIRMING that Dean was the love of his life and that the entire story up to that point was textually a love story! they DID NOT HAVE TO open that can of worms AT ALL! 

but they did open it. they made that choice (and the episode in which they did it was penned by an openly gay writer). but in making that choice, they also wrote themselves into a corner. if there had been an actualfax Cas/Dean reunion in the finale, no matter how ambiguously written or acted, it would have overshadowed EVERYTHING, it would have reconfigured Supernatural in its entirety as the grand and epic love story of a queer archangel and a demon hunter*. which would have caused an absolute shitstorm among the general audience/redditors who view Dean as a beacon of quintessential American masculinity.

so instead they play it mind-numbingly safe and never answer the question they set up, which is Dean’s Shrodinger’s bisexuality. my hot take here which I’ve taken a very long time to sum up – i think SPN actually wanted to do Destiel (and they may have for longer than we think), and they went as far as they felt they could. 

(of course, it’s not nearly good enough in the year 2020, and it would not have been good enough in 2004. i am not praising SPN for doing the bare minimum in queer representation. i’m saying we have to consider the constraints for a show that crossed all demographics, as gryfndor-goddess has also put it.)

anyway Misha is apparently doing a q&a thing this weekend, and i would not be surprised if what comes out of it are implications of cut scenes under network pressure. 

 

 

* the thing about Destiel that people who never went here don’t get is that it wasn’t just your standard wink wink nudge nudge BROMANCE; it was always constructed within a classic storytelling framework as a Romance. the sheer concept of a divine Angel of the Lord saving a mortal from Hell, growing Human feelings and Free Will, then betraying God himself and falling from Heaven out of loyalty to a single human – that is a Big Damn Love Story**. it was a big damn love story even when it wasn’t canonically explicit and it would be a Big Damn Love Story if Dean and Castiel were in the bodies of two jellyfish, because anyone with a single brain cell knows that the transformative power of love is the stuff that enduring romantic arcs are built on.

 

**not to say it was a healthy love story lmao, the Cas/Dean dynamic in the show is mostly insanely codependent and thrives on misunderstanding and mutual suffering. but frankly what epic love in literature doesn’t.

 

 

 

to conclude: can you believe that Supernatural created literally the biggest ship of the 21^st century (this is not an exaggeration - any writer would KILL to create a story that inspires the tumblr/ao3 stats that Destiel has!)… but in the end wouldn’t go all the way with it out of fear of its power. mess!

Comments

[goodbyebird]

(Don't mind me, just using the search feature to find posts on the show I left behind years and years ago.)

But I very much wanted to say it gives me life to see so many Bela icons out and about lol

And despite the shitshow, I'm very much pleased a Castiel got to speak his love out loud. Dean truly was the fulcrum of how Castiel interacted with the world, and it was 100% a love story from his very first season. (I honestly don't care if it's romantically reciprocated or not)

But yeah. I think I might actually be reading fic sooner rather than later. Gods help us all.

[ever_neutral]

Howdy stranger!

Bela was robbed! If anyone deserved to be resurrected from the fiery pits it was her.

I agree, Castiel's arc is excellent and complete regardless of Dean's reciprocation, although I will also continue to gnash my teeth about the show wussing out about Dean's sexuality.

I think I might actually be reading fic sooner rather than later. Gods help us all.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE. I've never even been much of a SPN fic-reader, but hilariously this is what may be pushing me over the edge. 2020 is truly full of surprises.