Supernatural: Resolution or Idealization of Winchester Codependency

Trigger Warning: The following article contains discussion of harmful psychological conditions, and includes a brief reference to eating disorders.

While the last Supernatural was primarily a Monster of the Week and fairly unremarkable in a history of similarly formatted stories, the final three minutes of the episode have sparked debate and discussion within the Supernatural Family regarding a repeated theme that has divided the fans for years: the codependency of the Winchester brothers.

Codependency is signified by, essentially, making a relationship more important to you than you are to yourself. Within the Supernatural fandom, it’s a heated point of contention: for some fans, it’s a rallying point, a symbol of the fact that the Winchesters are willing to die for each other. For others, it is a repetitive story device that has become a tiresome trope, used to manufacture drama between Winchesters and the rest of the Supernatural world.

Regardless of personal stance on the matter, Sam and Dean Winchester are undeniably codependent, following many of the denial, low self-esteem, compliance, control, and avoidance patterns outlined as characteristics of codependency.

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Season Nine’s “Character Development” and “Multi-Layered Storytelling”

So let’s talk for a moment about Season 9 of Supernatural.

That title may involve use of airquotes.

Going into the season, we were promised great things:

Regarding the “broken landscape” that season 8 left behind, we were told by Jeremy Carver to expect “A lot of players this year and a lot of players for the throne of who’s going to rise to the fore here, and there’s a lot of really juicy options that we’re going to be introducing, so we’re excited.”

What we have seen, though, is a broken king of Hell in a bunker cell and the trunk of a car, posturing with a rarely-seen Abbadon. We’ve seen Bartholomew once, and he was flat and generally uninteresting. We’ve seen Malachi once. We’ve seen Metatron once, same episode. None of these interactions really made a massive impact on the viewers, save Metatron outing Ezekiel/Gadreel. For the most part, the plot of the season has been put by the wayside in favor of one-off “funny” episodes.

And as for these new, individual angels. . . “I think the angels that have fallen are not a monolithic force, in that we treat them for the most part as individuals. And in that way, we’re really able to dig deeply into these individual characters, who are these angels.”

Well, I don’t feel I’ve gotten to know any of them particularly; and the ones we do are killed rather quickly, before we can truly care.

We had Carver telling us that we’re going to be getting a new look at these characters, a fresh understanding of them, in interviews saying “I think, especially after nine years, we all tend to put our brothers and the various supporting characters into certain boxes that we tick off: “This is who they are, this is how they would act,” and I think any time we can find a piece of the past that maybe makes us look twice at our characters, and maybe adds a couple extra layers of complexity, is always fun.”

What we’ve seen though isn’t development of these characters, it’s either regression or out of character. New layers implies that they build upon past ones, not slather over them to blot out what we already know. It’s one thing to think outside of that ‘box,’ and another thing to take these characters we love and render them unrecognizable.

And there’s the perpetual commentary about how character driven the season is:

Carver: “So we’re always trying to turn over a new dimension and new sides to our characters. I think we’re all really excited about taking a really strong character approach.”

Singer: “We left so many balls in the air and we have so many great characters that we haven’t paid off that we’re kind of telling a … I hesitate to say ‘soap opera,’ but that kind of character-driven, multilayered storytelling.”

But what have we seen of our characters this season so far?

Sam:

From the very first episode, Sam is whumped. He’s dying, and within his own head his conversation isn’t necessarily a terribly flattering depiction of this man we know has defeated the Devil. He’s immediately then non-conned into being an angel condom by Dean, and then lied to. This is where he sits the entire season.

If we look at Sam as a character, rather than both roles played by Jared, what has Sam been able to do this season?

Well, nearly die a lot. Honestly, we were all making jokes about how much Ezekiel had run around saving Sam, weren’t we? When did this man, one of the best hunters in the world, get so sloppy? What happened to the Sam that waded solo into that mess of Croats with Bobby staring at his back in pride and awe?

Additionally, when did he get so gullible? Sam is intuitive: it’s one of his great strengths, both as a hunter and as a human being. He’s intelligent, great at reading people, and not exactly easy to fool. So how is it that these lies Dean tells are being missed and shrugged off? Why didn’t he catch on? Why did it take another Veritas (whoops, sorry, Vesta!) scene to tell him something was off?

Sam has let Dean’s avoidance lies go in past seasons (think Hell), but not because he was oblivious to them.

But apparently this is the new interpretation of Sam. I mean, this guy’s been missing things like his brother “going missing on hunts” for months since he was 9 (or 12… math is hard!) when there was no hunt, and no conceivable way that smart kid we saw in past eps would buy that.

So.  There’s our “new layers” for Sam. He has been robbed of agency, transformed into a barely-present puppet to an angel who perpetually interrupts his conversations (that’s gotta be annoying!) and erases his importance in favor of a gimmick that we were once told kept Castiel from being a main character; taking the hunt and the war and the fight out of the hands of the Winchesters and making it too easy to get out of situations they write them into.

Where is he now: Well, according to Gadreel, there is no Sam (Only Zuul).

Dean:

Dean Winchester is a lying liar who lies. No, really. His entire role this year is to hold on to this ‘big secret’ of the fact that he sold his little brother to be vessel to an angel. I seem to remember this being a major plot point for several seasons, how they didn’t want that. They’re Team Free Will, after all, because they were fighting against being vessels.

So, this season has been one clumsy lie after the next to explain why they’re suddenly out of whatever situation they were in (because of convenient!Ezekiel interventions).

We’ve talked about Dean’s codependence since Season 1, and this season rather than changing that or giving us a new angle or even appreciation of it (for those keen on the idea), Dean is being held hostage by it. His codependence is a loaded gun held to his temple, telling him to lie to his little brother, kick his best friend out to be hunted without assistance, and generally alienate everyone he cares about.

This isn’t a positive no matter what side of the codependence issue you’re on: if you’re pro-codependence, you’re watching that relationship be twisted into something to hurt Dean and Sam both. If you’re pro-independence, you’re watching this be trotted across the screen perpetually in exactly the way you dislike. It’s a tiresome, repetitious plot device.

Like Sam, Dean is also being damseled this season. How often have Ezekiel, Charlie, Jody, Sam etc had to save Dean this season? How often has Dean actually been a decider, considering Carver discussed him “driving the mytharc.” Honestly, we haven’t seen it. What we’ve seen is Dean being a pawn to someone else’s manipulations from the very first episode (Gadreel/Ezekiel) and then having to MAKE himself seem like the big damn hero after the fact to explain what Ezekiel’s done.

Now let’s talk a little bit about character assassination. Dean Winchester is not stupid. Dean is intelligent, actually; he is clever, tactically-minded, mechanically-minded, has hunted and researched on his own, and he has a head for obscure facts that extends beyond just his pop-culture references. Sam is more educated than Dean, but Dean’s raw intelligence is not insubstantial. So why are we so often getting him written as “dumb for laughs”?

Dean’s also not skeezy: he likes sex plenty, and he’s a hell of a Casanova, and he will privately objectify women or do so with an audience he feels comfortable around (“Gumby Girl,” Busty Asian Beauties) but when Dean goes to pick up a chick, he does it with charm, a compliment, and an open offer. He may give a false name and job because of his line of work, but he goes in offering ‘a good time, one night only’ and will walk away when it’s not wanted.

He accepted Jo’s “self-respect” line on her last night on Earth, when if he’d pushed after seasons pining over him she might have gone for it. He didn’t demean Nancy in Jus In Belo for being a virgin or offer her a roll in the hay to disqualify her from Ruby’s spell. He walked away when Kali said she wasn’t interested. The argument for “Rock and a Hard Place” seems to be that Dean’s hot, so of course any woman would! Well, Dean’s hot, and there are plenty of willing women who aren’t in chastity groups, so why would he push?

This season has been problematic in its portrayal of Dean in many ways. His ‘new layers’ are either stripping away past development, or slathering on a thick glaze of caricature interpretation of his personality. Dumb, lecherous, lying one-dimensional Dean!

Honestly, how has either Winchester lived through the mess of their own lives if this interpretation is true to their past selves in any way?

Where is he now: Well, his little brother is purportedly gone because of his lies, his best friend is being hunted and going to war without him because of his lies, and his surrogate son figure is dead at his brother’s hands because of his lies.

Castiel:

This season began with a lot of promise for Castiel. Many fans believed for years that it was necessary for Cas to fall in order to better integrate him into the lives of the Winchesters or bypass the deus ex machina potential now being abused with SamZekeGadreel. His transformation into a human was something heavily promoted in the hiatus.

And from the start, rather than use this opportunity to have Castiel be the fresh eyes on humanity that he was lauded to be in the “Angel Warrior” featurette of Season 8, Castiel’s humanity is a running gag. An ancient creature who has been watching humanity since before it finished evolving, who’s fallen to (mostly) human before, lived an (inexplicable and understandably ignored) married life with Daphne, who has followed the Winchesters around from about a foot away for the past several years, and is unfathomably intelligent in many ways is written as an idiot because he’s in his meatsuit more permanently.

The transformations are jarring: this is no longer Castiel the warrior. It’s bumbling Cas in a way he’s never been: not when crazy, not when fallen entirely in 2014, not when tilting his head and declaring he doesn’t get a reference, and not even when he was the unwitting straight-man for jokes because of his unfamiliarity with humor or humanity.

His storyline has become about sex and laughs and torture; and almost ONLY sex and laughs and torture. From bouncing boob shots to dubious sexual consent with a creature who tortures and murders him after taking his virginity, to ‘is it a date or not,’ and on to backslaps and high-fiving over the hotness of chicks (. . . if Reapers are suddenly angels, was the April thing incest as well as dubcon/non-con of both parties? Lord only knows) the way Castiel is being written this season is probably more suited to a sitcom (well, minus the torture) than Supernatural, and feels disrespectful of his past and his capability.

Like Dean, like Sam, Castiel is now the frequently-damseled former hero as well. Castiel is gullible, canonically, but the repetition of him being duped and then tortured (down to torturing him in the exact same way in half the episodes he’s been in this season) by no means helps develop his storyline.

Rather than actually develop this humanity aspect they promised, they had Castiel inexplicably take to vamping other angels for Grace. Either this is his demon blood (repetition) or this is him stealing souls for power for the greater good (repetition), but either way it drops him back into sort-of angel with powers that may or may not work when you need them to (status quo).

These are our new layers for Cas: sex, lols, and humanity derp.

Where is he now: Tortured again. Dumped by his only friends again. Cutting ties to go to war again. Homeless still. Kind-of maybe an angel again (I figure season 5 inconsistencies of abilities).

Kevin:

Kevin had great growth and character development last season: Season 8 took the character from being a kid they had to chase after, to being one of the family. The end of last season challenged him to buckled down into his role as the prophet.

Unfortunately, the plot can’t have him figuring out that angel tablet too soon! So instead of contrivances like broken tablets, they suddenly had to render Kevin inept at tablet translation (you know, that thing he was specifically born for and fated to do). He’s translating to cuneform, he’s headscratching and lost, and generally he’s a lot less efficient with this whole tablet of Angel than he was his partials of Demon.

And when he’s not that, he’s written out in stupid ways: few too many shots the night before, going on vacay to a warded hotel room, he is handwaved away in absurd ways in order to explain his absence at the Bunker.

And then they do to Kevin what they tried to do several times to Castiel: they wrote him off of the show because they couldn’t figure out how to use the power they gave him. The writing put itself in a corner, the solution they built in was too powerful, and so they axed it.

New Layers: Dumbed down.

Where is he now: Shock value death in order to place guilt on both main characters (how original, Supernatural!)

So, given we know that not all of the season is written yet. . . where did these ideas of character driven and developing story come from? Where’s the exploratory season we were promised? Is this what we were meant to perceive as that?

What we have so far is a mess of broken characterization, choppy scripts that jumps from episode to episode and often scene to scene without creating a united narrative, juvenile humor, problematic consent issues, and little to laude about the current story arc. Canon facts like reapers, like their childhoods, like their capabilities, like how angelic possession works (if it’s THAT easy for a vessel to throw out an angel, they just undermined their two strongest seasons–4 and 5–almost entirely) are being torn apart, with the requirement that the audience rather than the storytellers find ways to fit these breaks into a new canon for the show.

I’m finding very little to look forward to in January as we leave the first half of Season 9 behind us.

The Chewbacca Defense, Argumentum Ad Nauseam, and other manifestations of our Broken Base

So, that last blog post was interesting. Not just because of the article itself, either, though I think my point was made and well received overall by its intended audience, but because of the reaction to it.

The first comments were general support, enthusiasm, and an outpouring of why people are interested in the Destiel pairing. The straw man argument to move Castiel to the spin-off because of his popularity was dismantled, and I pretty much stepped back and let people talk. And then I made a tactical error, as far as preservation of smooth sailing is concerned. I called a hater a hater and asked them to stop, and painted a target on myself. It was fascinating how things changed after that.

WordPress isn’t Tumblr or Twitter. WordPress has a vast array of tracking tools, visitor logging, pingbacks and the like built into the back end of the site; it’s why so many popular blog sites and news sources and such use WordPress, so they can get information about their readers and know where they’re coming from and what they’re interested in.

I’ve never really cared about it before. I mean, the traffic to my blog hasn’t exactly been staggering because I rarely ever posted on it anyway. It was a holding place for links to other things I’ve done and for a couple of personal remarks. So, where did they come from?

The Destiew tag on Tumblr. SPN Anon Haven. A few individual J2/Wincest blogs and Twitters, where they were cross-posted with the intent of drumming up opposition. It’s interesting to note that even after that endeavor to send contrary opinions my direction, the majority came from one individual.

One IP address, using 17 different names, posted 26 times in the comments of my blog attempting to create the appearance of a majority. Even going so far as to sometimes post “I agree!” in another name on their own comments.

Julia, Elizabeth, Kelias, WinchesterSandra, Jjjjjj, Divinity, Alexandra, Serena, J2Bells, Fangirl09, Samantha, Kelios, Karola1001, Elaiyana, Viktoria, Sherley, Emily, IronMan.  These are all the same responder. Same IP address. Same email address. Same source reference link.

Please reconsider your behaviors. You’re unhelpfully making your segment of fandom look unreasonable and ridiculous and you’re attempting to force dichotomy where there is none.

See, while my post was empowering to the Destiel fandom, it was not me encouraging the dismissing of the opposing viewpoint. Why, then, was it treated as something that needed to be trolled in an attempt to force me to give up my opinion? When that tactic went sour, I was labeled a  “Crazy Pseudo-Intellectual Bitch.”

The sort of Proof by Assertion method that was illustrated in my blog comments is pretty much constant within the fandom itself. The attempts to belittle an opinion just by saying it’s a minority opinion or inflating apparent opposition are what prompted my commentary to begin with.

Supernatural is a Broken Base fandom. It’s been that way for a very long time, and every single episode, every convention, every interview tends to fracture the fanbase even further. We’re getting worse, and it’s pretty damn scary to begin with. Half the time if you look through responses to an episode from opposing viewpoints, you wouldn’t even be able to tell they were watching the same show.

It’s a problem.

I can’t heal a fanbase with a Kumbaya and a cup of cocoa, but I can point a spotlight at the tactics being used to force and further a “True Fans” mentality.

Debunking Myth and Correcting Fandom Misconceptions: Destiel in SPN Family

Interest Over Time compiled by Google

The Supernatural fandom is no stranger to wank, ship wars, campaigns and disconnects between the fandom and the production, cast and crew of the mainstay CW show, now entering its ninth season. However, this week online has been the most troublesome time period for the fandom in general, as WB Executive Chad Kennedy and director Guy Bee unknowingly created a massive divide within the show’s active and diverse online community. Their comments left many LGBTQ+ fans feeling entirely disenfranchised by the show’s narrative and production side, and alienated a large portion of one of the most thriving internet fandoms spun off by any television show: the Destiel shippers.

It’s not my intention to document the wank. The SPN PR Twitterpocalypse that apparently furthered earlier accusations of queerbaiting by Supernatural has been well covered in other media. For the best breakdown of. . . well, the breakdown, I would direct your attention to The Daily Dot.

However, one repeated “fact” being spread within this mess by a segment of the fans to the cast and crew deserves to be called out for the deliberate misdirection that it is.

The Destiel fandom is more than 1% of the population of the Supernatural Family. 

The internet fandom concept of Dean and Castiel as a romantic relationship has existed since the angel’s introduction Season 4, in much the way that Slash ships always arise in shows driven by the close relationships of male protagonists. Long before the term Destiel entered into the fandom vernacular, internet trends showed a fairly familiar rise of interest in the pairing of Dean and Castiel. For a time, they mirrored the earlier growth of Wincest (the fandom sexual relationship between brothers Dean and Sam Winchester) within trends in the online fandom.

However, what spurred the large backlash of viewer responses we saw within the Twitterpocalypse is the increasingly romantic light the pairing has been shown in within the canon of the show itself throughout Season 8. Throughout Season 8, the internet trend Destiel surpassed interest in all other ships, show concepts and even the show itself because the Internet began to wonder. . .

Were they actually going to do it?

Were they going to confirm the romantic relationship they have been displaying in well-known television tropes, in framing, in text and in subtext?

Example from the SPN PR Twitterpocalypse

If Supernatural is in fact queerbaiting, in Season 8 the fandom took the bait. The pairing had us hooked. New viewers have flocked to the show in curiosity, Tumblr tags exploded with Destiel, fansites were created, podcasts speculated, even the media began to wonder.

The misconception that Destiel fans are a small part of the fandom actually overlooks some very simple truths in favor of unverified and condescending assertions. Based upon the results of Profound Bond’s census, many anti-shippers and more discontented members of other ships within Supernatural’s armada came to the conclusion that the numbers there were indicative of the entire fanbase. This discounts that many if not all methods of achieving accurate census on the Internet are highly flawed and provide an incomplete look at data, particularly fan created polls. Perhaps a better gauge of the ship’s prevalence online, and its prominence within the fandom, would be the fact that Destiel has not lost a single poll this year, or the widespread coverage of the ship in mainstream media over the past two months.

It should go without saying that this level of genuine attention has never been given to a “fandom created” homosexual ship in any show. It is far more on-level with the attention given to slow-burn television romances between male and female leads, such as the Rolling Stone cover of Mulder and Scully, and coverage of Castle and Beckett, or of Booth and Bones. This is a level of legitimacy given to this ship that spreads far beyond the enthusiasm of its fans, and indicates that this is an interest and news generator beyond Supernatural’s primary fanbase.

The systematic dismissal of the Destiel fandom has primarily been led by fans who viewed the introduction of a third lead as a threat to what they believe the core value of the show is: the relationship between brothers Sam and Dean (whether sexual or familial). These same people organized fan campaigns to have Castiel killed, to have Misha Collins fired from the show, and created a false narrative in which they portrayed Destiel shippers as sending hate and threats to actress Shannon Lucio, who was announced as a love interest to Castiel prior to the season beginning. Though these rumors were entirely false, her timeline was flooded with “apologies” on behalf of the fandom for rudeness that was not occurring. Throughout the Twitterpocalpyse, a stunning number of the comments sent to Kennedy, to Bee, and to other members of Cast and Crew were actually passive-aggressive attempts to completely dismiss the views of fans who were insulted and upset by the idea that a queer romance would need to be justified by the story-line. These comments from Bee and Kennedy were particularly concerning as they directly followed an episode in which the narrative had Castiel unnecessarily lose his virginity under false pretenses to a woman who then murdered him, in a series that uses and discards female love interests within the span of one episode on a regular basis.

The one percent myth was thrown at every writer, producer and crew member with even the vaguest form of creative control over the story in an attempt to devalue the view of upset fans and to create a negative view of shippers as being the “bad seed” of the fandom, despite the fact that many of the commentators are shippers themselves (of Wincest or J2) and are frequently the very people who demand changes to the show they are purportedly entirely happy with. When the question isn’t the correction of the mistake they consider Destiel or Misha Collins, they present themselves as the show’s only “true fans” and belittle the interpretation of others.

The truth is very clear, when you stop looking at fan-created ‘facts’ and push away the veil of false narratives and gaslighting techniques and claims of shippers cyber-bullying for their perspective, and look instead at verifiable facts within the show’s very active online fandom.

Interest Over Time compiled by Google

Castiel overtook both brothers in terms of internet trends following Season 6’s “The Man Who Would Be King” and has remained the show’s most searched, reported-on, and discussed character now for two seasons, and has a staggering lead over the others entering into Season 9.

Destiel overtook Wincest as the primary ship of the show in Season 8, when new fans flocked to the show in hopes of seeing the romantic storyline they had heard about on the internet fulfilled.

Dean’s canon bisexuality has been speculated upon since Season 2, long before Castiel ever entered the picture, and would need no further “justification” within the show to feel natural and unforced.

These are not small portions of the fandom. This is not a viewpoint that should be casually dismissed.

If Supernatural is in fact queerbaiting, with no intention of providing conclusion to the story-line they have built between Dean and Castiel, they need to address it to the fandom in a respectful manner, and they need to resolve it within the narrative of the show. But they need to do so fully understanding that this is not a “delusional” ship steered by a few “weirdo” fans who see “storylines that don’t exist.”

The show’s creative team needs to act with the full understanding that a substantial portion of their online fandom is searching for a romance they have come to truly appreciate as a large part of the appeal of the show’s beloved characters.

Supernatural Dallas Con: Days 2 and 3

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Richard Speight Jr and Matt Cohen

Day two of DallasCon began not with an introduction to his own duo panel from Richard Speight Jr, but Richard and Matt Cohen hopping into the audience and prowling the center aisle regularly, their hilarious act ready from the start. If you’re hoping to answers about the Trickster, about young John Winchester or Michael, or want to hear about their Supernatural experience you’re going to be slightly disappointed.

It doesn’t matter what the question is. The answer is “My spirit animal is an otter.” This became the catchphrase of the morning, and then every questioner was told to pick a number between one and 30, at which point Matt would read out a corresponding ridiculous Texas law. Did you know it’s illegal to own a realistic dildo in the state of Texas? Neither did we! But we know now. There are at least three…

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Supernatural DallasCon: Day 1

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Supernatural’s convention in Dallas is famous for “bringing the boys home” to Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki’s home state of Texas. As the last convention before Season 9 of the CW series begins and with several episodes filmed, fans are hopeful for more information from behind the scenes, are searching for spoilers, and are hoping for new tales of the pranks and antics that the show’s cast are beloved for online.

Friday afternoon’s events featured Richard Speight, Jr. – known better to the fandom as The Trickster or the Archangel Gabriel – opening the convention and staying for Rob Benedict’s panel to continue the duo act they’re becoming well known for in the con circuit. Rob has admitted that he’s nervous in panels (“neurotic,” Richard teased him), but together they became a non-stop comedy act that kicked off DallasCon on a positive and upbeat note, long before Rob’s panel was…

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Supernatural Episode Review: Pac-Man Fever

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Supernatural fans have something to cheer about as actress Felicia Day and writer Robbie Thompson once again paired up to bring us out of the funk of a two week hiatus filled with fan wank and disgruntled viewers.

After some spotty characterization and fast-and-loose continuity in Supernatural’s episode 19, “Taxi Driver,” we were coming back into the show after a break that gave many fans time to stew on problems in “Season GR8,” rather than wait in anticipation for the newest adventure. Interviews and previews for tonight’s “Pac-Man Fever” left many in fear that it was a lighthearted romp and Monster of the Week episode, out of place so close to the finale, or that it would exclude one character or relationship in favor of the others.

More pointedly: a lot of fans flipped their lids that the only real sign of Sam they saw in the preview was of…

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The Veronica Mars Movie: Live from the Kickstarter Party in Austin

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Rob Thomas didn’t think he would have enough people to fill the patio.

When the creator and writer of Veronica Mars sent out a message inviting supporters of the Veronica Mars Movie Kickstarter campaign to join him for a beer and to watch the numbers roll in, he never expected that the Dog and Duck pub in Austin, Texas, would become an impromptu convention for fans of the long-cancelled television show, bringing in devoted “Marshmallows” from as far as Arizona, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. As the RSVPs began rolling in, Rob panicked and hopped back onto the update emails, asking fans “Do you really want to have a beer with this fat, sweaty man?” and adding “You all realize that it’s just going to be me with my laptop and a documentary crew, right?” meaning that they could expect no visits from Kristen Bell, the actress of the show’s title character…

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Supernatural: “Goodbye Stranger” Episode Discussion

Goodbye, Stranger

It’s Winchester Wednesday, and around these parts that means one thing: novelty t-shirts, pajama bottoms, burgers, pie, and three fangirls lounging around on couches and the floor, recreationally arguing every new episode of Supernatural to air. I guess that’s just what happens when you put a Dean!Girl, a Cas!Girl (guilty as charged) and a Sam!Girl in one room. It’s all in good fun . . . though we think our Sam!Girl is a little afraid of us sometimes.

Coming into tonight’s episode we rewatched Torn and Frayed, which brought us closure on the brother versus brother angst, the completely unsurprising reveal of an angel tablet (seriously, was anyone surprised?) and our last glimpse of Castiel. Torn and Frayed ended with the brothers warding Rufus’s cabin against Castiel listening in as they discussed the possibility that someone is pulling Cas’s strings. We’ve got some classic dramatic irony going, building tension that carries into tonight’s ep, as the viewers know about Naomi and the CIAngels and our boys remain unaware.

So, what’re we expecting to see tonight? Unfortunately, our SamGirl was unable to attend, though she’s liveblogging via text to me to make up for it, which leaves the rabid Dean and Cas girls to argue with each other before and after the episode. Here’s the truncated (we had an hour to kill!) general preshow.

@ExorcisingEmily: So, what are you expecting tonight?

@Mrstserc: I am expecting Cas to boldface lie to the boys, Sam to be sickly, and Dean and Cas to have to go off and work on something themselves and come across Meg. I don’t know whether or not the possibility of Meg and Castiel ever having a thing will ever be brought up, but I expect Cas will kill her because she knows stuff about the angel tablets that Naomi doesn’t want Dean to know. I also expect Naomi to tell Cas to kill Dean.

@ExorcisingEmily: I’m with you about Naomi telling Cas to kill Dean. I think that works into the Manchurian Candidate homage they seem to be playing to: the last thing she needs to do to really break Castiel would be to kill Dean.

Creator and Fandom Control: Why you should care about the Veronica Mars Movie

A long time ago, we used to be friends. . .

Bringing cancelled TV shows back as movies by appealing directly to the fans: imagine the possibilities. Firefly? Chuck? More importantly, letting the creator and the fans determine when the story is over cuts out the terrible studio decisions that dragged this great show down in Season 3.

I’ll admit, I once took part in flooding the CW offices with bizarre mail in order to try and make my voice heard about a TV show. Before Feathers for Castiel (you can stop now, guys, we’re getting our angel back) there were Cloud Watchers flying planes with messages over the CW offices, and there were Mars Bars and marshmallows from the dedicated fans of Veronica Mars. I dread to think of how our efforts turned out, once they were taken out of their envelopes. . . they were probably a melted mess. I almost feel bad. Almost, but not quite. I’ve put together post cards, fliers, participated in online campaigns, and made friends through our dedication to fandoms.

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