Hobby Drama

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

Supernatural just ended its 15 year run. To catch up, you can read about the recent Destiel love confession; an actor who appeared in 4 episodes and harassed fans; a comprehensive writeup of the fandom in general, especially "tinhatting"; more general fandom drama; or a racist Haiti AU fic. Supernatural provided no shortage of drama.

But if you don't want to read all those previous writeups, the summary for this one is:

Over the course of the show's run, the fans were divided in to two groups. Group One were people who thought the show should be focused on the brothers, Dean and Sam (played by Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, respectively. Some shipped the brothers together. Group Two were people who thought Castiel (played by Misha Collins) should have a more prominent role and fuck Dean (ship name "Destiel"--you've heard of it). (Edit: There is, arguably, a third group of people who watched the show as a show, but I haven't actually met anyone who has).

It became abundantly clear that The Powers That Be (writers, producers, Jensen and Jared) were in the former group (minus the "Wincest" shipping). They shunted Misha/Cas off for episodes at a time with flimsy excuses, tried to write him completely off in one season and then haphazardly brought him back after fan uproar, and hazed/bullied Misha on set (ex: Misha talked about how Jared would tickle his balls out of the cameraman's view so that it looked like Misha was messing up his lines, among other things).

Misha said his final scene was his now-infamous love confession, which many fans lovingly described as "embarrassing." After fifteen years of pent-up tension, Castiel finally gets the courage to confess his love to Dean--and Dean responds with facial expressions that were memeified as "trying not to say a slur" to "trying not to commit a hate crime." Then, after confessing his love, Castiel gets sucked away to supermegahell, never to be seen again!

But fans knew that couldn't be his last scene...As one tumblr post said, "honestly it's quite impressive how supernatural, a show in which everybody dies & no one stays dead, has managed to convince a huge chunk of people that one of its leads is not coming back for the finale"

And it's true. Pretty much every character, major or minor, on SPN has died at least six times. Fans pulled out release photos, social media pics, and lines from interviews to prove without a shadow of a doubt that Castiel would be in the last episode--whether Destiel was made official or not.

What really gave fans hope, though, is that actor Jensen Ackles said he felt "uneasy" about the ending:

"And I just walked out of there kind of uneasy. I don’t know if it was just the fact that I just heard the ending of a show that had been going for 15 years and I’m just too close to it to really accept a finality to it."

And since he's historically uneasy about Destiel, fans connected the dots: Destiel would be canon in the finale!

So did we see Cas again? SPOILERS, obvs.

Here's what happened in the finale: Sam and Dean are bored. After everything was literally resolved in the penultimate episode, the world is pretty peaceful. Cut to commercial. Finally, they find a hunt. Cut to commercial. They follow some leads. Cut to commercial. They fight the monsters. Dean gets impaled on, like, a nail on a barn column or something and with his dying breath he tells Sam he's proud of him and asks for permission to die. This takes, like, a full 15 minutes. Cut to commercial. There's a montage of Sam being sad and petting a dog. Cut to commercial. Dean goes to heaven, reunites with a loved one (not Cas) and drives around. Cut to commercial. Montage of Sam raising a kid and Dean driving around. Cut to commercial. Sam dies a natural death of old age. Cut to commercial. The brothers reunite in Heaven.

Oh, and there was an emo version of Carry On, Wayward Son.

Basically the episode was three montages in a trenchcoat, with the lead characters meeting anticlimactic ends. Dean Winchester dies of tetanus. Sam wears a powdered wig from a Halloween discount store to show the passage of time.

Cas is mentioned twice throughout the episode, one line where Dean or Sam is like "I'm sad Cas is gone" and Sam or Dean is like "We have to move on and keep fighting" and one line that implies Cas escaped from supermegahell, somehow, but no more on that.

The response:

" Wow y’all got hate crimed harder than Sherlock fans did. I am very very sorry"

"GAY RIGHTS TOOK A STEP BACK THIS FINALE SINGLEHANDEDLY REPEALED SAME SEX MARRIAGE"

" that episode seemed like a love letter to Wincest shippers and a HUGE fuck you to destiel shippers ngl"

" they really hated cas and misha so much that they spent the finale pandering to the fans who wanted the brothers to fuck"

But even the Wincest shippers weren't happy, because the ending was boring and Dean's death was lame. But no one was more upset than Destiel shippers, who held out hope that Cas would return. So of course there's the angry hashtag:

" you're right dabb, it WAS bold to end 12 years of queerbaiting with a bury your gays and then never mention your queer lead again, very bold !! #cwspnisoverparty"

" The fact that Cas is trending because the whole fking world is raging about his pathetic excuse for an ending. He deserved so much better. #cwspnisoverparty"

" SPAM REPORT CW_SPN AND GET THAT SHIT SUSPENDED PLEASE THAT'S ALL I WANT and trend #cwspnisoverparty BUT MOSTLY REPORT THAT ACCOUNT THERE'S NO BIGGER FUCK YOU THAN THAT PLS"

And the angry tweets to the writer of the finale ep:

" ANDREW DABB IS THE WORST FCKING THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO THIS SHOW AND DEAN WINCHESTER"

" sweet boy..... god i am so sorry i will miss him so much i'm plotting my revenge on @andrewdabb right fucking now. cas deserved better. cas deserved BETTER. #Supernatural"

" The #Supernaturalfinale feels like an insult. Like @cw_spn and @andrewdabb actually just kicked me in the chest and walked away laughing. What the HELL was that? "

And of course it wouldn't be a disappointing queerbait finale if there weren't a Fake Episode conspiracy:

" All I want to say is that I hope @andrewdabb releases the original script, which I very much feel was more found family friendly, but that they couldn’t execute any longer due to COVID. The fandom deserves to see it. #Supernatural"

And it turns out the most likely reason Jensen struggled with the ending is because Dean dies like a punk.

EDIT:

OK, let me clarify a few things:

• "Homophobically gay" and "Jensen/Dean is about to commit a hate crime/say a slur" are popular memes describing the 15x18 confession and Destiel in general. Ill-phrased and insensitive phrasing perhaps, but pretty popular (and also accurate).
• The remark about hazing/bullying: Misha has said that the pranking has crossed a line a few times, but the cast seems mostly friendly regardless. On the writing/producing side, his treatment seems unpleasant compared to Jared and Jensen's, but he seems fine with it and gets paid nicely. I don't want to fall down a rabbit hole of conjecture and conspiracy theorizing. If I find the specific interviews, I will provide them, but they are from a long, long time ago and there is a lot of SPN content. Like, a lot. The show's been on for 15 years.
• A lot of people think the show is bad because it is bad, not just because Destiel didn't become canon. The plot, characters, and writing in general were messy as fuck from an objective standpoint, regardless of any personal stakes.
• I forgot to mention that the finale monster of the week were vampire clowns or as the fandom calls them vampire Juggalos.
• Link to one of the interviews where Misha talks about ball fondling: https://youtu.be/8bwzaP3l_28
• In my rush to post the writeup out I glossed over the non-shippy reasons why the episode was terrible and the fandom reactions, so here is an update: UPDATE It hasn’t even been 24 hours and Jim Beaver deactivated his tweet because of fans’ rage tweeting.

Jim Beaver played Bobby, the boys’ surrogate father. He’s generally a fan favorite, but some fans flipped out because he returned for the finale but Cas didn’t:

“y'all somehow managed to bring back jim beaver and mark pelegrino but misha was the one that couldn't make it bc of covid... the third fucking person on the call sheet. ofc he was the one y'all found to be expendable.”

“You literally brought Jim Beaver who’s a person of RISK be there amongst other 80 people on a bridge NONE OF THEM WEARING MASKS and you’re telling me that you couldn’t bring Misha Collins???? naa im calling this homophobia…”

“Like let’s not act as if Jim isn’t 70 years old that you placed there among the crew with no care and also the vamp chick from season 1 that NOBODY remembers... y’all just don’t like Misha Collins there, just say it”

“the show brought back mark pellegrino, jake able, jim beaver, vampire #207 and etc but misha and shoshannah two pivotal and essential characters to sam and deans story and the show were just too much”

He posted, “Thanks to all the kind people and thanks to all the unkind people. I’m deactivating my account. So long.”

Steering away from the Destiel drama, tetanus, juggalo vampires, and wigs were also big stars of the night:

“saw six people go "TETANUS?!" on the timeline and assumed bid*n caught it but its DEAN WINCHESTER????”

“I’ve never seen supernatural but the person who said that dean never got his tetanus shot because he thinks vaccines turn you gay is the funniest person alive”

“things Old Man Sam looks like: https://couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name.tumblr.com/post/635275319674372096/things-old-man-sam-looks-like-an-english

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here