one thousand days of destiel, or cas: fuckerupper of endings
Idk why Iām crawling out from under my woodpile to write this, except that it occurred to me that in three years Iāve not rewatched a single episode of Supernatural and have at least two dozen tags yet blacklisted on tumblr, and that I am still not okay about this stupid show.
I never tried to tie up the folklore/author themes Iād been geeking out about through the last seasons, neither as the show was ending nor afterwards. Iāve been simmering now for over a thousand days. I could not even write a complete sentence about spn for all this time, and so I just left that pot on the back burner and did other things. Finished my Masterās degree. Started a new job. Saw my oldest child graduate from high school and move off to college, and helped my younger child move on to sixth grade. Watched some other shows, got a new blorbo, saw some movies, started painting again, picked up a couple of new hobbies as I am wont to do.Ā Ā
Today is the 5th of November, 2023.Ā (ETA i sat on this for a bit.)
November 5th, 2020, was exactly one thousand and ninety-five days ago.
I see gifs from the show from time to time and I think to myself, wow, that scene/episode/series is completely irrelevant to my life now. I am fine and normal about everything. But if it really was, if I really was, it would not hurt so much to see the gifs and the lyric posts and the amvs when they arenāt caught in my tag filters. So maybe itās time to get some things out of my head and onto paper.
I genuinely, nearsightedly, naively thought that since Dabb et al had been the ones writing the whole folk v author themes, and thus posing as someone we could count as being on āour side,ā the folk-side of the postmodern audience, theyād honor that conceit, even to the very last shot.Ā
They did not.
And yetā¦ they absolutely did.
Which hurts and is fucked up, but also itās fine. Itās fine.
In the end, the only āfolk heroā (by which I mean the only force in the spn universe capable of warping the threads of the story with any permanence) was Castiel. When Castiel left the story (of his own volition, if you can find a comfortable layer of this meta pie for that concept to rest in,) the writers reverted to God Mode. Because Castiel had been their freedom, their mouthpiece, their avenue for improvisation, and so at the end of the seriesā¦
well, we got You changed me/I love you
Ā Ā Ā ā¢
and then we got āCas helped.ā
So much has been written about that pivot point, but genuinely I donāt give a ratās ass about rewrites, producers, the cutting room floor, or COVID. It exhausts me, and Iām not beholden to writing about spn for grades or notes or any kind of other bullshit that would oblige me to do research.
I feel likeā¦ we got what we got.
So letās criticize some media.
The Paradox:Ā
Cas implodedā went from flexing the narrative from within to being narrated by a force from without. And I couldnāt bear to wrap my head around that for a long time. It seemed that this ātwistā was beyond cruel. Thatās what he got. Vanished and nerfed. For saying ily. That was what happened when he was finally in focus, fully revealed. He lost. He was relegated, along with Jack, to become heavenās Two Men and a Truck.
It was a trick, the whole āChuck is a writerā plotline. The Author regained control of the character that had previously been acting independently. Very Pirandellesque, very frustrating, ultimately even tragic.
So, yes, thematically and critically, having Castiel give up his Agency for Characterhoodā giving up his ability to create plot for a role as a character in a plotā was āliteraryā brilliance. It cemented his status as a grand fucker-upper of the show in a way that any show writer āauthoringā a requited destiel ending would not and could not have done. Even Jack, I believe, had been āmanipulatedā into god-hood from within the narrative. Jack was Dabbās grand metaphor, he was a product of Author. Castiel wasā¦ well, he was a chaos engine from the moment he walked through those barn doors.Ā
To seal the metaphor, the writers ended up living that truth.
I really donāt know if Iām being cogent about this. Iāve been struggling to turn this idea into words for, like, ONE THOUSAND DAYS.
The folk-vs-Author themes becoming A Thing in The Supernatural Show was like a chemical reaction: once the ions had bonded, the resultant compound could not be separated back into the different materials. What on that screen was Author, what was āauthor,ā ie show writer, and what was text-experiencer-as-author? Where did the Sam-as-magician arc go, what were we supposed to do with the semi-metatextual moments that Mary had, having been brought back into the narrative by Amara, not Chuck? Everything got so out of control. Add in a smidgen of secret-sauce-TPTB possibly superseding the author/Author, and what you get is that ridiculous mess of a final two episodes.
Itās not about the rusty trombone or the butt hole pleasures. Itās about love. And kids.
Thank you, hon. It really is. (The above line was left in this doc by my spouse. It is a quote from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Iāll allow it.)
Anyway. It was hard to see past the sound and the fury of it all.Ā
*****
I was feeling nostalgic several months ago and took a swim in my old meta tags; I found a gem from seasonā¦10? Idk and idc, but it was from āThe Things We Left Behind.āĀ
I compared Claire to Sleeping Beauty (a tale that got a lot of use in later seasons) and wrote: āI tend to think that Castielās entire arc is about desperate and unintentionally misguided attempts to Change The Ending of whatever story heās shown up inā and reading that again really kind of sucker-punched me.
āWeāre making it up as we goā was the crux of Casā existence. Remember that half-related story in Baby wherein Cas got himself hitched to the Djinn queen? Remember when Jack died and the Empty came to claim him in Heaven and Cas made that terrible bargain? The last-minute attempt to gank Lucifer that actually got him killed and sent to The Empty?
Time and time again, Castielās go-to for āchanging the narrative,ā for advancing his plot, is self-sacrifice. In Chuckās house against the archangel. The Leviathan disaster. Saying āyesā to Lucifer. The Bargain for Jack in Heaven. And those times it worked out. Not without great pain for both the other characters and for the viewers, but he always came back.Ā
And with each return, his motivation became clearer. (Picture your favorite screencap of Dean here.)
Casā love grew, crystalized, and then disappeared, like frost on the windowpane of a house on fire.
If they had continued the CasDean storyline, it would have ultimately been The Author IRL writing/creating/manifesting/materializing ādestiel.ā And so by putting a torch to all of that architecture, they essentially gave everything to us. Unspoilt. Fingerprints wiped. Serial numbers scratched away. Jailbroken. Whatever floats your boat.Ā
The confession was both affirmation and abnegation. Symbolically, The AuthorTM had washed his hands of it, but with destiel out of the picture, The Author also got his ending.
This is why āCas helpedā felt like a āfuck you.ā If Cas was out of the narrative, why did he come back as one of Heavenās real estate developers? It did not fit.Ā
And yet. It did. Because Chuck won. Chuck, or everything that an Author represents in television landā TPTB, showrunner legacies, multiple producers, a chaotic and treacherous and politically messy writerās room, multiple incompatible or unresolvable MOs and visionsā all that ends up being packaged and presented as a single unerring vision.
So I have to admit, although I donāt have to do it with any ion of grace, that in the end it was pretty fucking smart.
Destiel is ours. Destiel is the folk ending. The Author never got to touch it, never so much as breathed on it, was so far divorced from the concept that the absence thereof going forward hit us like a truck full of bricks.
Yes, it hurts that Dean was just left on the floor until the credits rolled, that there were no final words, no ensuing acknowledgement.Ā
Iāll go so far outside the Text as to address the āDean canāt reciprocateā direction from one of the scripts:
If Dean had made a single move onscreen. Uttered a word. In Despair or either of the other two episodes.
Destiel would have been claimed by The Author.Ā
Anyway. Iāve been collecting posts now and again under the tag āthe endless folklore of supernatural.ā For three years, the fandom has continued to loot, to ransack, to graffiti, to create and re-create, to burn, to mix, and to distill.Ā
Thereās all kinds of things in that tag, itās sort of a kitchen sink of everything that I thought was even tangentially relevant to folk-Destiel and the postmodern experience of creating text as a reader/viewer etc.Ā
We turned a literary story based on an urban folktale back into folklore.Ā
And so it goes.
I doubt I will do much more analysis of this show, even if it comes back, and I unfortunately canāt touch The Winchesters. But I canāt say I never will. I just thought three years, one thousand days, was a pretty good place to leave a marker on the trail.
ā
Epilogue: About The Winchesters:
I did not finish watching The Winchesters because of something wildly, randomly, but highly personally triggering that was built into one of the episodes; however I am very sorry that it was canceled or possibly ironically lost to the WGA-SAGAFTRA strike of 2023.
āWhat is the maddest thing a man can do? Let himself die.ā Thatās the clue that leads Castiel to his hidden grace in a copy of The Man of LaMancha in 10.18 āThe Book of the Damned,ā written by one Robbie Thompson.
I noticed from the get-go that Thompson gave Carlos the last name Cervantez. He was nodding to the self-immolation of the last cadre of writers of Supernatural and stating clearly that he was holding a pen, not a match.
Want some very fun and amusing and wildly pertinent facts about the Don Quixote books?
The narrative conceit of Don Quixote IN THE FIRST PLACE LOL is that Cervantes claims to have found a manuscript by a historian named Cide Hamete Benegeli and Cervantes thought the story was pretty neat, if a little rough; Cervantes retells the story for us from what heād read by that author, distilling the āoriginalā into the book we experience as Don Quixote the Man of La Mancha.
The final words of Cervantesā Part One are āperhaps another will sing with a better pick.ā
Later, someone publishing under the pseudonym Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda wrote their own part two, feeling that the original author was taking too long to get their ass in gear (or judging by their own preface they felt that Cervantes had not even done the original story justice in the first place. Which is A Mood.)
So when someone actually did have the audacity to run off with his characters and commit word crimes with them, Cervantes absolutely obliterated the dude in his own Part Two.Ā
Thompson left Spn after season eleven. But, lest someone think this is a commentary about fan fic, he also wrote the episode Fan Fiction. So anyway all the Cervantez-Cervantes business was certainly something.
I sort of love the TV show Bones because it's fun for the workplace comedy bits to involve people handling decomposing corpses while talking about their love lives or whatever, but it's also about a bunch of weird nerds psychologically tormenting a bisexual artist whose only respite is playing with unnecessarily advanced and technologically unlikely art tools that the United States government spends an insane amount of money on for her
Sometimes I wonder if Zack hadn't have gone to Iraq would he have been in a vulnerable enough place for Gormogon to sink his claws in?
As soon as he got back from Iraq he mentions that he had a difficult time fitting in, and what the psychiatrist said over there clearly shook him. How much did he internalize what he saw over there? How bad did those words get to him?
Maybe I'm overthinking because of how much I hate the Dr Addy Gormogon Apprentice storyline, but Zack deserved better.
I went into that part of the show kinda knowing some big plot points so I knew it was gonna happen and thatās EXACTLY what I thought!
Zack Addy goes to Iraq (my husband was there for two tours, during that time frame of the story even, so I absolutely know poor Zack saw some shit) and knowing the character as I did, I immediately said āooooh, so thatās how it happenedā¦..ā
And that, in addition to that asshole psych guy, thatās my take on how that horrid storyline happened. It just makes sense š¤·š¼āāļø
Do gay Klingons ever get frustrated/dejected because their gentleman caller hasnāt so much as kicked a pebble their way or uttered the slightest growl?
Do questioning Klingons ever show their crush their poetry, only to have their crush assume that heās helping them proofread or something?
Is there ever an issue where a lesbian Klingon tries very awkwardly to recite poetry to her lady love?Ā
Or instances where two lesbians are basically beating the shit out of each other and both thinkingĀ āI know she thinks this is just a regular old gal fight, but no, seriously, Iām trying to declare my intentions hereā?
Are there euphemisms for LGBT Klingons?Ā āDonāt try to win her over, Riker. She reads poetry.āĀ
i have made the decision that for my 30th birthday i'm going to the united states :D something to look for, to save money for and a trip to plan! new york is a must but i would love to see california too
I hate hbo max. I hate Disney +. I hate Amazon prime. I hate streaming platforms that treat their staff and creators like donkey shit. I hate that they donāt compensate for rewatches or popularity and canāt even take out the fucking commercials. I hate our monthly fees for media that can just be put in the vault and written off as if it never existed. I hate our reliance on mega corporations for our daily serotonin. I want weekly shows where I can theorize with my friends. I want dvds to be popular again. I want no commercials and for my favorite creators to be paid to imagine a better world than this.
Regarding the note on your latest fic (which is wonderful, by the way, I continue to love your writing)ā Iām curious, do you tend to get a lot of shit from people about one shots? Iām so sorry if you do!
Absolutely, yes. Not high level shit from a particular individual, but a large, wide level of shit as "Give me more!" is intended as a compliment without being understood as a demand.
I do take things like this as the compliment it's most likely intended as, but it always makes me feel guilty knowing that I have no further plans for the story cuz I don't want to disappoint people. Or on a long WIP, if I get stuck for a little while between chapters the guilt builds up, and anxiety over whether the rest of the story will even be worth the excitement.
There is always a burning fear that whatever I just posted is the last thing I'll post. And the more please comments are 110% understandable, because I want more too, but it kinda digs that fear in a little deeper each time.
Itās definitely anxiety building, agreed. Plus when I have like twenty new things I want to do or continue or finish, it very much ups they āwhy arenāt you doing more?ā reflex, which I have been trying to remind myself is straight up insane in regards to my writing amounts.
fun fact: i actually had to make this as big as clip studio would allow,* because its so skinny that tumblr formatting was unprepared for the height. i think that may be whats causing the mobile issues for these things- tumblr is used to such pixel-sparse images being fairly short, so it didnt account for my absolute onceler of a gif
*which is still pretty lo-res, as csp doesnt expect anyone to try to make a gif like this either
sometimes i get a little stressed out because iām living in a part of history thatāll one day be talked about and discussed and papers written and what am i doing? what have i done? laundry, barely
My friend was visiting me the other day and as she sat in my living room she noticed my plastic hairbrush on the table.
"Why do you have a plastic hairbrush I thought you care about nature and you try to avoid plastic!"
Why? Because I can still use it. I have had this brush for cca 12 years. It is not broken. It's fine. And I will have it for as long as it works and then buy a good alternative. We don't throw away things that work perfectly fine just to prove to other people, that we care. We use the things we have FIRST!
There is no need for buying a stainless steel lunch box if you can still use an old plastic one. It's fine.
USE WHAT YOU HAVE FIRST and when it no longer works like it should, dispose of it responsibly and then get a good alternative. You don't have to prove anything to anyone.
I had a brush since I was single digit age. Iām 43, it broke recently.
I was LOST! That was my favorite brush! It was the right bristle hardness, it was the perfect shape. The handle was comfortable. .....it lasted forever.
I tried to find a new one, they didnāt make it anymore.
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