the fact that a cat considers “sit in the same room ignoring each other” to be an acceptable social activity and not an insult is great for me because that’s how i like to socialise

spnhiatuscreations | week 3 ↳ dean winchester 

D E A N + adjectives

To critique or not to critique (of the unsolicited kind)

Spoiler alert: I firmly belong to the not camp.

A post just crossed my dash that put the worst taste in my mouth. I don’t want to reblog it, but I do want to address the contents because I think the subject is super important.

The post basically boiled down to: fanfic writers are thin-skinned babies “these days” because no one can take constructive criticism. In “my day” we all sent page-long critiques like the dedicated heroes we were! It made us better writers! Moreover, if I didn’t like something, I told the writer all about it! It was my job!

Hold up, what?

I’ve been posting fanfic online since 1998. Twenty years. Pre-archives. And “in my day” we had betas if we wanted/needed/asked for them (whose critiques didn’t have an audience). We said “concrit welcome” if we actually wanted constructive criticism. We did not show up unannounced to point out a work’s flaws because that is rude. Look, I am an editor. People pay me real money to edit things for them. I would rather cut off my own fingers than burst into someone’s comments and start “critiquing” their work without being asked first.

Here’s something that needs to be addressed: fanfiction is real writing, yes, but it is, by its nature as something that isn’t monetized, a hobby. As in, a thing people do for fun. A thing that hopefully brings both authors and readers joy! The story an author posts a is a gift; how dare anyone rip a gift apart in front of the gift-giver and all the other party attendees? How entitled and ungrateful can you be? Fandom is not a frigging battleground where authors learn to harden themselves for war. It’s a hobby. Done out of love and enthusiasm. 

Yes, some fanfiction writers (certainly not all!!) aspire to be original fiction writers. They may use fanfiction as a training ground. They may want or benefit from constructive criticism. Still, they have to ask. They have to start the conversation. I know (think?) it’s harder to find betas these days, but it’s always worth asking around if real critique is what you want. Put “concrit welcome and even begged for” in the author’s notes and hope someone takes you up on it. 

Some fanfiction writers with original fiction aspirations still don’t want criticism about their fic. Fic may be their fun-writing outlet. It may be about instant gratification (and there’s nothing wrong with that; we’re not in the business of denying ourselves pleasure out of some moral superiority here. It’s fandom). It may be the place where they post to get around their fears of showing things to others. It may be the place they take risks they wouldn’t in their original work because the stakes are lower. When you work on your original writing all day, every day—often putting that work through far more vigorous and exhausting paces than fanfic sees—the last thing you want is someone showing up during your time off to point out a frigging comma splice or shift in POV.

The point is unless someone asks for critique, you don’t know what’s going on with them. Maybe fic is the only fun thing they have in their lives. Maybe they’re writing in a different language. Maybe they are 14. Or 82. Maybe they’ve never written fiction of any kind before and this is their baby step forward. Maybe fic is just escapism. Maybe they are depressed or anxious as hell and criticism is going to push them over an edge. Fandom belongs to everyone. Not just people deemed “good” or “perfect” or “permitted” or “thick-skinned.” People don’t need to be saved from grammar mistakes or poor turns of phrase or even plotholes so wide a semi could drive through them. Authors sure as hell don’t need to be told when a reader just doesn’t like something. There is no fandom police force in charge of perfection. If critique is so important to you, advertise your willingness to beta. If you do not like a story or think it’s “bad” hit the freaking back button. 

Unsolicited criticism is not helpful. Maybe you just catch someone off-guard and startle them. At worst, you may totally shatter someone’s self-esteem while they are partaking in a hobby they 100% do for fun—and not in pursuit of some unattainable perfection.

Don’t ruin a stranger’s day or week or hobby because you “know better” and somehow think you need to prove it. You don’t.

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

As a one-time giver of unsolicited concrit, this is so important. You think you’re being helpful. You’re not. I got better. You can too.

EVERYONE WHO READS FANFIC NEEDS TO READ THIS

It can be really hurtful. you might not only ruin someone’s day or week, you might make them stop writing all together. 

i have thought a lot about censorship and what is “appropriate”. not a lot of people know this, but lolita was written to show what we allow on our bookshelves: there being no swear words in it meant it was free from censorship. a book about child molestation was allowed because it didn’t explicitly use the word “fuck”. he wrote it to show we don’t really care about protecting children, and it ended up being seen as a romance.

someone once told me - actually, many people have - that lgbt content isn’t appropriate for children. any content. not just kissing. i’m drowned in questions: “won’t the parents have to explain it?” “kids shouldn’t be thinking about sex at this age, or do you think differently?” “what will the kids think?”

at six i saw disney movies. people kiss and get married. i didn’t ask “what does that mean.” i didn’t ask “are those people going to have sex?” i didn’t ask anything, because i was six, and no six year old thinks twice about these things. nobody ever “explained” being straight to me, it was a fact, and it existed, and i was fine with that. why would being gay require a thesis, i wonder.

someone once told me that the one of the reasons people hate lgbt individuals is because they can’t see us as anything but sexual. we’re not people, so much as sinners. that they don’t see love, they see sex. just sex. it’s perversion, not a matter of the heart. only of the body.

i think i was in my early twenties before i saw someone like me. 

how old were you, though, before you saw violence? before you saw sexual assault on tv? i think something like that is only pg-13, and if it’s implied, they can get away with anything. i remember watching things and learning about blood, but knowing sex - sex was what was really wrong. sex was always rated r. sex was always kind of a bad word. i was told a lot that i wasn’t ready.

i had a dream last night that i made a site where people could ask any question they wanted about sex and get answered by a professional. it was shut down in moments because 15 year olds wanted to know if it should hurt, if “double-bagging” was a real thing, if this, if that. we shudder. don’t let the children know about that! 

but at thirteen i had seen enough violence it no longer struck me. i couldn’t say “fuck” but i knew that if you break your femur, you can bleed out internally in under half an hour. in school i wasn’t allowed to write about loving girls because what would the administration think - but i could write about wanting to kill myself and people would say how lovely, how blistering.

i have thought a lot about censorship. sometimes people on this site try it with me: don’t write this, don’t be so nasty. some of it is intrinsic. we know as people with a uterus not to complain about “that time of the month”, we know better than to talk about sexual assault (how shameful), we know that talking about a vagina is somehow scandalous. i can say “dick” and nobody questions me. some people only refer to the bottom half of me by “pussy”. they won’t wrap a mouth around “vagina” like it’s poison to them. even discussing this, that the language halts, that there’s an intrinsic desire to say “girls” instead of “women” - feels naughty, illicit. not for children.

the other day someone suggested i make my blog 18+. i said, okay, it deals a lot with depression and other problems that might be for a mature audience. oh no, they said, that’s not it, i think that’s helpful. i said, okay. so what is it then. well, you’re gay. you write about loving women. and i said, i don’t write about sex often and they said. it’s not about the sex. but wlw isn’t for a general audience. teenagers aren’t ready.

oh.

lolita is recommended for high school and up. i think about that a lot. i know girls who love it, who say it speaks to them on a deep level. it’s beautiful prose, after all. that was the whole point of the novel. something that looked like a rose but was intrinsically awful. i think about how if i was a model they’d want me to look young, thin, prepubescent. how my body would be sold and how through the mall i walk by images of barely-clothed women while mothers cannot breastfeed in public without fear of retribution. 

i think about how i can write a novel about violence and it will be pg-13 but if my characters say “fuck” twice it’s inappropriate. i said fuck three times so far in this post, which makes it only appropriate for adults. 

i think about that, and how my identity is something that people suggest lines up with a swear word. that people shouldn’t talk about it. that it’s a vulgarity. bad for children, harsh, confusing.

fuck. i love women. which one makes this only for those over eighteen.

This is such a powerful post. Read it fully, and spread it around.

the problem with popular culture depriving us of same gendered couple representation is that you sit there, and don’t know if you ship two characters of the same gender romantically or you’re just really loving the platonic relationship, because healthy platonic relationships are fucking important to showcase as well and fuck if i don’t wanna see more healthy caring and gentle and loving - especially m/m - friendships, but the second two characters are healthy and loving with each other my heart head goes to romantic connections because it hasn’t been normalized yet and i’m just craving to see it represented and made a regular part of storytelling in mass media

#on my way to jensen’s house for his acting in s13 like

I gif search “flying squirrel” and I am dying 😂😂😂

Quick doodle of the S13 finale where everyone is happy. Lucifer and Michael are defeated and Dean still has powers~ And they all hug!

That’s what happened, right?

Sam’s tactics for goading Dean into action to drive Michael out:

- driving baby like a lunatic and scuffing her tyres, spoiling the leather with juice and beetroot salad

- scratching Dean’s records and pulling the tape out of his cassettes while he calls him up so he can hear the whine as they unravel

- leaving the bunker kitchen an absolute mess and texting him pictures of it getting worse every few days

- finding someone to flirt outrageously with Cas

Sam’s tactics for goading Dean into action to drive Michael out:

- driving baby like a lunatic and scuffing her tyres, spoiling the leather with juice and beetroot salad

- scratching Dean’s records and pulling the tape out of his cassettes while he calls him up so he can hear the whine as they unravel

- leaving the bunker kitchen an absolute mess and texting him pictures of it getting worse every few days

- finding someone to flirt outrageously with Cas

Oh cool, I didn’t know there was actual talk about it, because I’ve been guessing that Mary might be staying in the AU for uh… Oh idk. Three months, I think. It suits her better, and also lets us tie off that part of the story.

I expect to see Dean be really frustrated about it because he’s concentrating on the idea he can bring his family back together at this point and taking his eyes off what he has that actually matters, and I suspect that will swing round to hit him at the worst possible moment, how much he’s taken Castiel’s return for granted. I thought he was there last week but. Hm. Slowly but surely.

Yeah, this is interesting and makes sense, because it’s even being foreshadowed through Charlie with the “I can’t lose you again” - “That’s not up to you” exchange. In S12 Mary couldn’t, and even refused to, conform to Dean’s idea (or ideal) of her as the long lost mother figure. She needed to find her own identity in this new world she’d been brought back into, where everything felt off and she felt like she didn’t belong. 

The only argument I have for why it might be wonderful for Mary to choose to stick with her boys is that it will tell us that she’s moved out of that state of displacement, and is now choosing for herself where she thinks she belongs: with her family. We got the reason for her staying away given to us in S12, of course, and the reason was fear - of not living up to this ideal she felt her boys, and especially Dean, might have of her - and fear of the guilt she felt should be placed squarely on her shoulders for all the crap her boys have gone through. 

That was her real reason for teaming up with the BMoL, her desperate need to rid the world of monsters and right all those wrongs she felt she’d inadvertently done to her boys. It would keep them safe, too, rather than out risking their lives. Of course, she didn’t stop to think that she was taking away their right to choose for themselves and when she, in 12x01, told Dean she never wanted the hunter life for him and Sam (which of course Dean was already fully aware of because it’s not the first time he’s heard her say that), his response was more or less that this is what they do and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’ll be interesting to see if Dabb & Co. feel Mary has fulfilled her purpose in the narrative or not. They seem to love Sam Smith and to not mind having her stick around. If Mary does choose to leave Apocalypse World, I can see her totally  striking out on her own next season, much like she did in S12 but with better communication set up with the boys. She wouldn’t stick around the bunker, because she’s not just a mom, she’s a hunter, and perhaps the perspective afforded to her by the fact that her choice to make a deal effectively saved this world of ours (on multiple occasions) will bring her the peace she’s needed to actually enjoy this new chance at life. I can see her being an asset, as well, moving forward, when it comes to knowing the roots of the hunter community etc. but oh how it all depends on where they’re going with the narrative. 

I won’t be surprised if the writers start cutting back on characters by end of the season, and of course the Apocalypse World provides them with an excellent opportunity (Ketch is surely not only staying but sacrificing himself for Mary) (so there’s one character death on the horizon) 

As far as Jack is concerned… I’d hate to see him go, is really all I have to say on that, but he’s getting stronger by the minute and we can’t very well have a godlike character riding shotgun with TFW now can we? Boo hoo. And it makes sense he’d continue to learn about his powers while rebuilding Apocalypse World, because Jack - in contrast to Lucifer - surely CAN create. My only question then becomes if we’re meant to say goodbye to Jack for good if this is his choice, or if he stays there only to learn the skills needed to come back to our world and promote balance between Heaven and Hell, creating more angels etc. Is this the first part of a dual seasonal arc or are they wrapping S12 up with S13 and moving us forward into S14 with the focus on a new big bad.

It appears to me like S13 is setting up the stuff we’re going to deal with in S14, but…

As always - we shall see. 

There’s another big thing to remember here, and that was the fact they seemed to have started writing s10 as either a series finale, or else at least a Major Arc Finale to tie up s8-9-10 in a tidy bow, but then whoopsie the network renewed the series and suddenly Carver (who’d been pushing for his new series to be picked up elsewhere) was left with the fact that he had to continue things into s11… and he basically ran out of plot. Here’s the best graphic example of what we’re talking about here:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/168510403535/what-does-plot-accordion-mean

(with links to actual interviews with Carver that 100% support this theory, and lizbob’s fantastic accordion diagrams :D)

So instead of tying up the story as it had been written for TWO AND A HALF SEASONS, we got the *wheeeeeeeze* of the plot accordion where they were scrambling for *stuff* to add in to fluff out the arcs and dodge the bullet they’d fired with that s10 title card because they were in no way ready to bring anyone’s emotional arc to a conclusion yet.

And I’m also wary and cringe any time I read “endgame” in speculation, because I’d been indoctrinated into the fandom during the s8 meta heyday and I know what it feels like to be burned. BUT! I think this is part of why Dabb has taken an entirely different tack with his larger narrative structure.

Part of it is that he CAN. The network has (since s11) begun saying that Supernatural will always have a place on the CW as long as everyone involved wants to keep making it. I mean, nothing is ever guaranteed, but they finally feel secure knowing that they can write the thing at their own leisurely pace and aren’t trying to fit the entire series character arcs into a set number of seasons anymore, you know?

But also, Dabb lived through that plot accordion. He was the guy who had the second half of s11 unceremoniously dumped in his lap with a post it note reading OKAY FIX THIS PLS when Carver left to helm his own series.

I believe if nothing else, we’ll know when the final season will begin airing. There will be PR. There will be Major Announcements from every corner reminding us of the Very Special Final Season of Supernatural. They’re gonna push it with everything they’ve got in hopes of finally drawing back a lot of the audience that’s fallen away over the years, if nothing else for the sake of nostalgia and the hope that people will want to be along for that incredibly emotional journey to the Winchesters’ personal finish line.

So between now and then, Dabb’s not actively running directly at that finish line, because he doesn’t have to. He can explore all sorts of side alleys, run around through the snowy forest, poke around in alternate universes and cartoons a bit, without feeling like there’s a Main Narrative Objective that needs to be reached on a set timeline.

And IT IS SO MUCH MORE CHILL omg. 

Yes, this does mean there’s not likely to be any resolution to the essential questions surrounding the three main characters and their personal growth any time soon, but Dabb is doing everything in his power to dig out and expose all of their issues to be dealt with in the mean time.

And when we do get the announcement that Supernatural will be coming to an end, we’ll all have an entire season to get used to the idea, and we’ll likely see all these themes that were abandoned in s10 come back around in major ways, because those were endgame themes that Carver accidentally started digging up before we reached the endgame.

(and I have a tag for this strange phenomenon: http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/mittens+makes+peace+with+s10+via+dabb%27s+spitewriting+of+s12%3A+an+ongoing+saga/chrono if you’d like to explore some of the many ways Dabb’s been poking at Carver era in a pleasantly critical fashion)

I was here during seasons 9 and 10 and was one of the people writing meta and trying to make sense of the second half of s10 (mostly after Charlie). 

I have never thought that Carver chickened out back then. It was just that, as @mittensmorgul said, when the network renewed the show, he ran out of plot. He realized that it was way too soon to deal with endgame, thus the accordion effect (y’all should click the link mittens shared). 

I understood why Charlie was killed off (though I will NEVER justify the way in which it came to pass). The codependency had gotten Kevin killed (thanks to Dean) and a contrapart was needed; another member of the “family” had to get killed, this time thanks to Sam. 

However, everything about the Styne family seemed to be pulled out of nowhere because it most likely was. If the showed had ended in season 10, killing Charlie off would’ve been illogical because there was no time for the Kevin = Charlie symmetry. But when they realized they did have the time, they decided to continue down that road. The codependency was NOT fixed and the way season 10 ended proved it. (I wrote about it at the time over here: http://charlie-minion.tumblr.com/post/120656327377/theres-always-been-unexplained-stuff-in-spn-but)

In s11, they gave us god and his sister as mirrors of Dean and Sam. It was a really good way to handle the toxic relationship between siblings after such a codependent couple of seasons (9 and 10) that saw no resolution of the issue. We actually saw complete resolution in 12x22, so it took them a long time. (Dean and Sam’s relationthip this season is a lot healthier; they are finally brothers, not parent and child anymore).  

When @bluestar86 says that in s10 it felt like Carver changed his mind last minute, she’s not wrong. He probably did, but it wasn’t out of fear, it was when he realized Supernatural is literally the show that shall never end (as I like to call it). He might have been ready to move on, but the fans, the cast and crew, and the network weren’t. 

Expecting a confession from Dean at this point in s13 is NOT WISE. It would be great, but it’s not wise! 

You guys are forgetting that we’ll have season 14 and that IT WON’T be the last one. As mittens said, I’m sure there will be a huge announcement once they know the final season is coming. They had a chance for that during PaleyFest but did nothing of the sort, so I’m positive we’ll get season 15. 

Do you know what that means? No resolution of major endgame themes! 

That’s just how things are and it’s not Dabb’s fault. It’s the format of the show! Some things simply won’t work until the show reaches its final season.  

We will get more subtext and more text as well, just enough to pave the way, but there won’t be any resolution until the end is close. People can get angry and scream and whine all they want, but that doesn’t make it any less true. 

So, I’m definitely NOT expecting a confession this season. I might hope for an argument between Dean and Cas and some words between them, but Dean won’t say enough (just as he didn’t in 11x23). 

Cas and Dean are NOT ready simply because the network isn’t ready to let go of its longest-running series. 

There is enough subtext and text to have Dean and Cas romantically together, but Dean still needs to be open about his feelings. And guess what? He won’t be open any time soon, because that’s the only thing keeping them apart this season. 

The enemy is miscommunication. And I like that enemy better than an actual big bad taking Cas away from the Winchesters (because if we got any confession, SOMETHING would happen to separate them for the sake of drama!) 

*screams*

I can confirm I screamed when I saw her

5.22 | 13.18

i’m still itching to write fic where dean buys himself his very own “it’s like i’m wrapped in hugs” nightgown. so i googled nightgowns for men and this is the closest to what the one in the ep looks like. it even appears to come with a night cap, which - c’mon, it’d look so cute on him

i can’t decide on the color though - dark blue or light blue?? a diffent color altogether?? there are plaid options too but those are atrocious @ddean @thejabberwock @postmodernmulticoloredcloak help me decide???

Hum hum... if I may... if you're going for blue... maybe one matching Cas's eye....? With Dean going *I just kind of liked it but I can't quite figure out why...* and shipper!Sam being so done with how oblivious Dean is...? (if you're into deancas/destiel of course 😅)