It Doesnt Have to Be a Bad Thing, Yknow

Sideblog where I can scream into the void about spn. She/her, queer, white. Officially a fandom old at this point. No terfs. No white supremacists. Please do not follow or directly interact if you are a minor. I recommend you at least skim the pinned post before following (yeah I know it's long, better get used to that now).

[iminsideyourgrapefruit]

new blog pinned post time

Made this because despite being on-again-off-again obsessed with spn since... like a very long time ago, I have been dragged back once again. And apparently couldn't avoid screaming into the void on social media about it. Despite the fact that the fandom at any given moment appears to be trying to eat each other, even years after the show finally ended, I am choosing to partake and insert my perspectives and experiences as well.

I'm sure this will go fine.

At all times I'm thinking about media through a Doylistic lens as much as I am a Watsonian one. Probably a lot of my posts will have a Doylistic-analysis aspect to them.

Don't expect posts to be consistently about any one subject, like shipping/a particular ship, a single character (trying perhaps hopelessly to avoid x-coded y-girl simplifications because I feel like they're too narrow for my perspective), etc.

If and when I have the time to write meta, those text posts may well be very long, and use a lot of language consistent with academic media analysis. This is not me trying to put on airs, it's just how I talk, especially when it's appropriate to the topic/type of discussion. Also I have a mostly-worthless literature degree. Let me have this.

An Incomplete List of Things I Love About SPN:

Dean Winchester: The best, most psychologically complex representation of parentification trauma I've ever seen. The heartbreakingly sympathetic victimization of being a parentified child, and the horrible darksides of control and abuse that can come with caretaking burnout & entitlement. My psychosexually-obsessed-with-masculinity poor little meowmeow. He doesn't need me to be his defense lawyer because he'll tell you himself he actually did do all those crimes. But more importantly, he has a gun, 10-years-experience torturing people in hell and liking it, and a deep desire to go back to Purgatory where it was "pure" "360 degree combat." If you question him, he will kill you. I just think he's neat.

Sam Winchester: The original doomed-by-the-narrative ostracized, outsider softboi. The repressed, wants-to-be-normal-but-can't, "demonblood-in-me" metaphor for early-aughts queerness (and later for, neurodivergence, delusional mental illness, addiction, and ptsd). They should have let him be worse. They should've let him fuck more monsters. They shouldve let him become king of hell. He was never built for a normal life because his identity is Other. He does need a lawyer. I'm not one, but he never actually went to law school and no one else is stepping up. So here I am, clown makeup and all.

The Kripke Era (s1-5): Unironically love this era. If there weren't some aspects of the show I like which were introduced in later seasons, I'd say the Kripke arc should've ended the series and it would've held up as one of the best, most thematically and character-developmentally rich, well-executed shows of all time. Alas.

Genre, Setting, & Theme: A horrifically Midwestern American Gothic masquerade, complete with painstakingly complementary themes, things like: Class/cultural anxieties at the turn of the millennium! Social isolation as a result of symbolic marginalization and American individualism! Abandonment by God and the creeping dread/emptiness of living alongside American cultural Christianity! Childhood and family and identity as something difficult to see accurately especially if we're stuck in the middle of processing it! The multifaceted complex horror of crumbling barriers between family roles when trapped together!

Archangels & the Angel/Demon Lore: At least when it's done well, this absolutely triggers my curative fandom need to riffle through and understand everything, including in its larger thematic context. I also like to try to sift through the rubble of bad/inconsistent spn lore and try to make it make sense. For what I assume are purely masochistic reasons at this point.

Deanbenny: Deanbenny is the purest m/m ship is spn fandom history and you cannot change my mind. Benny is a cinnamon roll in a show devoid of them. In my head he got brought back, and him and Dean rode off into the sunset and are off somewhere being a disgustingly domestic soft masc4masc couple forever. Yay!

Crowley/Deancrowley: Crowley and his whole situationship with Dean was very much not my bag until one day it suddenly was, and the brainrot is now neverending. Crowley, they only killed you off in the most disrespectful and baffling way ever because you served too hard. You deserved to get a resolution to your redemption arc, and for you and Dean to resolve your whole enemies-to-besties-to-divorced-frenemies, will-they-won't-they deal. In the most dramatic, bitchy, exes-to-lovers way possible.

S5 Samifer: It's been s5 samifer hours up there in my head. For like... 10+ years. Yeah, it's a (sort of) dead ship with a (debatably) unhealthy premise. But the themes, the symbolic parallels, the tie-in to the entire narrative arc... Themes! Motifs! Symbolism, even! Metaphors for queer repression and connection, the likes of which rival NBC's Hannibal!! Realistically I probably won't even post about this all that much, but the chance that I will at some point is much higher than zero. ETA: Okay actually I've been posting about this a lot more than I originally planned. This was probably always inevitable. Anyways, sorry. Or you're welcome.

An Incomplete List of Things I Don't Love About SPN:

Castiel: I don't get angry or hate Cas from a Watsonian perspective, the way some salty fans do. Like I certainly don't think he's a more problematic character than anyone else. Nor am I intellectually blind to why many people in the fandom really connect with him - a traditionally attractive unmistakably autistic-coded character. I just personally have never felt it, and 90% of the time he's onscreen in later seasons I can't stop my brain from being conscious that, Doylistically, he isn't doing anything for the themes or narrative. Or even being as consistently, intentionally written as other side characters like Crowley or Jack or Rowena or Garth or Kevin, etc, etc. And i'll be honest, i am salty about that. If you consider yourself to be a Casgirl, I don't think you'll get much enrichment from this blog. Although, who knows!

Destiel: This follows pretty much the same logic as above, except that I'm much saltier with people who like Destiel than I am with people who just generally like Castiel specifically. I don't care at all that people ship it, I have so many spn ships including pretty obscure rarepairs, I'm not trying to gatekeep anyone from their own feelings about what pairings resonate with them. It's that I don't like how Destiel shippers, for decades, have consistently tried to "claim" the spn fandom as essentially Their Space. Insisting that the only reason not to connect with or support the ship is because of queerphobia. Basically erasing, or attempting to erase, every other experience with/reading of this massive, complex, multifaceted piece of media. Meanwhile, I've almost definitely read more spn fanfic than any other fandom, over the course of at least a decade and a half, and I've probably only read like, a handful of fics where destiel is the main pairing? I could probably read fascinating, well-written spn rarepairs and genfic alone for the rest of my life and have plenty to choose from. The point is, it's a massive, very queer fandom with a lot of diversity of lenses and connections to this rich, complex source material. And destiel is just one part of that, not the whole. I have plenty of friends, mutuals, and favorite fan writers/authors who love this ship, so I know there are cool shippers who exist and probably even make up a good portion of the fandom. But I won't pretend I'm not exhausted and salty about having to see a bunch of takes that are constantly erasing, oftentimes on purpose, any other connection to spn. Tl;dr: if you're a destiel shipper you could be cool, but there are way too many destiel shippers who've been bad fandom neighbors; I'm not going to hide how petty and exhausted this makes me, so go with good will or follow, but like... Be Aware.

The Quality of Late Seasons SPN: I don't like to make objective statements about art, because all artistic opinions really are subject. We bring our own perspectives, influences, and aesthetics to what we consume. That being said... I personally feel that the late seasons of spn, from a thematic/narrative/genre consistency and production-level execution perspective... it's bad. It's cringily bad. It's "I was cool with regular non-fandom normies knowing I'm a Supernatural fan before but now it's just lowkey embarrassing" bad. It's "I'm only here because I've invested too much time and I'm surviving on the crumbs of references to what it used to be please someone save me this is no longer a show its a hostage situation" bad. To be fair, there are always interesting new elements being introduced, and the fandom picks it up and runs with it and makes incredible pieces of meta and fanfic and art that threads the needle between every dropped ball of plot and theme and characterization, and makes it worthwhile to still engage with. But I give way more credit to fans for cobbling headcanons together into one giant workable fanon for this era than I do the creative team, especially the longer the show went on. I will definitely not filter my late-season criticisms on this blog, so be aware if you're sensitive to that.

Miscellaneous Other Stuff to Be Aware Of:

If I ever go inactive for a long while, it probably means I'm hyperfixating hard on something else at the moment. But I'll be back. I thought I was completely exorcized from caring about spn once it ended, and then two years later I got a wild hair for absolutely no reason to finish that sabriel longfic I'd been picking at for years. I'll always come crawling back. I'm trapped in here.

I don't consider myself a wincest shipper, but a lot of the wincest girlies (gn) are doing excellent media analysis of the themes of the show, specifically as it revolves around the characters of Sam and Dean and their relationship as central to the piece. I dont have any personal triggers related to incest, and it isn't a squick for me (well, mostly). I'm sure I'll be reblogging things from wincest blogs; I'll be sure to tag anything that directly references incest, which probably will be rare, but please don't follow if it's a big trigger for you.

I swear there was something else important I was going to put here to help me/you navigate the contentious, heavily-opinionated shark-infested waters of spn fandom on tumblr dot com, and figure out if we're MFEO. But I can't remember what it is, so I guess we'll both be figuring out what it was together. May god have mercy on us both.

Some Relevant Tags I'm Trying to Maintain:

meta from insideyourgrapefruit -> all meta and analysis

posting from insideyourgrapefruit -> all my original posts

queercoded Sam -> all posts, mine or not, about Sam & queercoding

parentified Dean -> all posts, mine or not, about Dean & parentification

spn & America -> all posts, mine or not, about spn, Americana, and American cultural values/themes

[suncaptor]

I don't think everyone else is losing their mind enough about the fact that in 2009 they made one of the first things Sam Winchester ever do when he met the devil was kiss him.

[ambiguous-brother]

[loumandivorce]

extremely genocidal language here that combines post 9/11 bush era "anti-terrorism" speak with behavior probably purposefully meant to evoke the holocaust. sam and dean (especially dean) and other american hunters talk like this too but its framed as more menacing because its the british men of letters doing it with their pansy fancy gadgets instead of "blue collar grit and determination" (real phrase used in the summary of the boys also created by kripke).

this argument in 2.03 bloodlust - dean's perspective hasn't changed from this but sam's seems to have considerably. he's far less likely to consider the lives of the monsters they hunt, or at least he's less likely to let it impact his decisions/argue with dean over it. that's ofc due to a result of years of dealing with being beaten down over his own monstrosity and dean's reaction whenever he tries to go "hey this is bad maybe". but sam's reaction to the bmol is not to be impressed but rather incredulous/uneasy, which is ofc bc of his history with them and the Necessary distrust that Real Hunters would have but it also seems to stem from discomfort over how they're carrying out this genocide against all monsters. Technically, sam and dean's goal is wiping out all monsters but its not what they actually want. the hunt is never over, hunting is the only thing that's real, outside of hunting there is no life for them, etc. the bmol's calculated cruelty poses a threat to The Righteous John Wayne Lone Ranger Way. the institution is effeminate and is a detriment to white american masculinity

[loumandivorce]

nevermind i was wrong sam does fw the bmol now. the institution is still effeminate and a detriment to white american masculinity though which means dean is the lone cowboy who is fighting for tradition lmao

[chapeldean]

sorry but i can’t get over how the impala just…. runs. all my life we’ve had old shitty cars because dad’s a mechanic and he fixes them at home but like. even 15-20 years old cars with a 150,000 mileage demand….. a lot of maintenance. it’s not really a head canon as much as it is the only realistic thing to imagine that dean spends ALL his time off-screen hunting down parts and repairing his old ass car 

[chapeldean]

@castinkywinky @girlbossdean exactly

[quietwingsinthesky]

I was thinking about your post about how incest is especially important to queer people because of the whole intimacy that isn't allowed thing because I went to see Rocky horror again and I do think it's interesting that the story whose entire point is "oh, you think we're all monsters who are going to corrupt the perfect pure heterosexuals? Awesome. I'm going to make a story where we are in fact evil monsters who do exactly that, and we also look awesome and have more fun than you could ever dream of and the heterosexuals do indeed discover new parts of themselves and are fundamentally changed" not only has the inhabitants of the castle crossdressing and having lots of both queer and ""straight"" sex, but also doing incest. Richard O'Brien clearly also gets the link

yeah!!!!! and that's why rocky horror is important. to me, but also to so so many queer people. that's why queer people gravitate towards fantasies about the forbidden, the taboo, the maybe-a-little-bit-evil. because being queer is fucking exhausting, and don't you just want to go apeshit! or, to put it a little more delicately, when people have spent their entire lives mired in the message that everything they are is rotten and wrong, they can either choose to keep presenting themselves as palatable as possible to a society that will continue to degrade them no matter how much of themselves they cut off, or we can all embrace that identity to the fullest and in doing so, reveal how much of a sham that claiming it's all monstrous really is. and we only get to have fun in one of these options.

sorry askdjalkjsd i just, i think a lot about this. we're in a weird position with queerness in media nowadays, right? where it's finally... sort of acceptable, a little bit okay, so long as it isn't too outrageous or in too many people's faces. which is, to be clear, a good change. but it also leaves us with a very long, very complicated, but also very beautiful history of people finding themselves in less polished places. i think about the people who say we should all hate rocky horror picture show because it's transphobic, and i think about how many trans people for decades have found freedom in performing alongside and seeing the movie. i think about that controversy a bit back where some spn fans started decrying that any claims of sam's queercoding that related back to his demon blood were homophobic because it related his potential queerness to something dirty, and how I as a queer person have always found that reading of the demon blood storyline to be so intensely cathartic specifically because of how relentlessly he's punished for being Wrong despite it not being in his control.

For better or worse in most media, until very recently, to be queer was to be monstrous. the sea witch stealing a woman's voice to trick a man into marrying her. the obsessive housemaid caressing her late lady's underwear. effeminate freaks and dirty sinners. and I've seen a backlash to how queer people, mostly older queer people, relate to that media, because it's Problematic. because we "have better representation now". because if you refuse to separate yourself from your history of being the monster, you're a lot harder to dress up as respectable.

I really do think that's bullshit. I think that now more than ever, we need our history. Glorious and ugly. I think it's naive to pretend we can cut a dividing line between Good Queer Rep and Bad Queer Rep. We need to carry this forward with us or else risk being convinced that we can laugh at other people who need our help for being freaks. And we need it because RHPS fucks hard. obviously.

AND ANYWAY. bringing this back to incest before i get fully lost in the tangent. modern queerness is tied to and contrasted against the ideal of the family. american nuclear families, specifically. queerness is a threat to stability, a threat to individual family members by luring them away. and that, too, is an important part of our history. both the perception of queer people as that threat, and the way that queer people have turned family into something they can own. think family reinvented to mean a group of disowned and disempowered queers looking after each other. think the terms we associate with queer communities: leather daddies! drag mothers!

that's not like. anything to do with incest kink. but it's to do with the point i'm making that in the absence or specifically in opposition to the traditional family, queer people reinvent the terms and roles. and now to actually relate it back to incest kink, if you take one side (our perceived threat to family) and the other (family is a construct that we have the power to define to make us safe and cared for), then like. yeah. obviously. queer people are gonna be into incest kink shit. the forbidden love, feeling like something's wrong with you, like you're the threat inside your own family, like you want what you feel to be good even as you're told it isn't. or to own it, to tear down the family structure from the inside out because you embrace being wrong, that's an understandable desire too.

and like. also it's hot. obviously.

it's all connected, is what i'm saying, i think. everything forbidden and nasty and villainous and awful; that's the reality of how queerness is perceived. it's gay marriage getting legalized and pundits saying bestiality is next and then everyone getting mad at furries about it, you know? we can find ourselves in exaggerated, unrespectable representations of queerness. or we can try to bury them and say we'd never be like that. we're gonna get accused of shit either way. call your lover your brother, and do a fucking musical number.

[ardentpoop]

[marriedcas]

Favorite Women of Supernatural 4/? – Cassie Robinson 

[youre-only-gay-once]

Ava Wilson in 2x21 All Hell Breaks Loose Pt. 1

[boykingscourt]

AVA WILSON | SUPERNATURAL 2.10 - HUNTED

[loumandivorce]

trying to seriously analyze sam's behavior based off an inherent "little brother" quality that he must have makes an argument meaningless because its not actually engaging with the reasons he does things. instead its adopting dean's perspective on the Sammy role. obviously the hierarchical structure sam grew up in and still exists within informs the way he acts, but there's such an emphasis on him being the Younger brother which gets ridiculous. he's only four years younger than dean at the beginning of the show, and by season 6 when he comes back from hell hes actually hundreds of years older than dean, which is never actually addressed but his behavior is obviously very different from that point. ive already complained about the way fandom believes dean "takes care" of sam way more than he actually does, but in later seasons its sam who is tasked with regulating and managing dean's emotional state. but it helps people to think of sam as the immature annoying younger brother and dean as the bereaved caretaker who thanklessly sacrifices everything for him

[prokopetz]

Every time someone tries to explain the metaplot of Supernatural to me, it basically ends up sounding like redneck Dragon Ball Z. I’m sure there’s some nuance I’m failing to grasp here.

[kazorus-deactivated20190626]

Care to elaborate on that?

…I’m not even offended, just absolutely curious.  From the stuff I’ve seen and heard about Supernatural I can’t see the connection.

[prokopetz]

Mostly, I get the impression of a show that doesn’t know how not to escalate.

Every threat’s gotta be quantitatively bigger and badder than the one that came before. Every deus ex machina’s gotta be shinier than the last one. Every season’s gotta end with a massive eleventh-hour powerup for our heroes, only for the next season to raise the stakes enough to put them back in the underdog position.

It’s like, you beat the Devil himself? Well, now you’ve gotta fight the Devil’s cousin Phil, who has conveniently gone entirely unmentioned up until now, but he’s totally twice as evil.

[prokopetz]

That last paragraph was literally supposed to be the most ridiculous hypothetical example I could think of, and people are messaging me to say “his name was Metatron, not Phil”. I can’t even make fun of this show.

[seasononesam]

it does annoy me how sam isn't allowed to have feelings on his own childhood without being accused of not understanding how dean feels. TO BE PERFECTLY HONEST

[keen-eye]

are you team sam & dean as rats in a maze or as hamsters on a wheel

sat & dat or samster & damster

[keen-eye]

sat & dat and samster & damster are still tied

[keen-eye]

he is REALLY into being a hamster

[keen-eye]

even crowley can see it

[keen-eye]

sam clocking rat!dean from the start

[seasononesam]

wtf is dean going to do in this psychic kids hunger games situation

[seasononesam]

[seasononesam]

I am your mother, but I am not "just a mom." 

[rowenagirl]

I feel like nobody thinks of ruby and meg as victims of sexual violence, bc they are also perpetrators and ppl don't like thinking of perpetrators as capable of victimhood, and bc their capacity to be narratively understood as victims is kinda erased by the distance between demongirls and the bodies they inhabit (demongirls in early spn function as a 3rd gender best described as 'women it is OK to hit') as though nothing that happens to them physically counts as though any sympathy evoked by their pain is automatically suspect (and that's another convo abt how the show trains you to always be suspicious of women in pain or distress). so ppl just completely erase that aspect from their understanding of the characters even though it's sooooo critical.