Welp.

Hi pals!

It's been almost exactly eight years since I posted a Supernatural episode reaction on this here LJ. I stopped watching the show after that—I got behind, then promised I would catch up and never leave but did neither of those things.

In the intervening years I moved to Tumblr and got deeply into One Direction fandom, but stopped being able to write not long after the band ended. These days I post sporadically on my Tumblr; most of my fannish interaction is about The Untamed and via Discord or just gchats/whatsapps/telegrams with my friends.

Of course I miss the culture of the old LJ days, and I miss being part of something the way I felt with SPN fandom back then. It's so difficult to connect the same way with Tumblr, which isn't really built for the long-form navel-gazing that was my bread and butter as a 20-something, and I always have trouble formulating responses to asks or reaching out via chat.

Anyway. The reason I'm posting now is, of course, because the SPN series finale aired on Thursday.

I cannot believe I've been watching this show for 15 years. lazy_daze and I first started watching together during the mid-season 1 hiatus, so we binged up through Shadow and then watched weekly from Hell House on. I would get up at 4 AM the day after it aired (at uni in London) and torrent the new episode as soon as it was up post-premiering in the US. Sam and I watched them as soon as possible those mornings, before lectures. I still have such vivid memories of that excitement!

I stopped watching early in season 8, as evidenced by my last episode reaction here. I just couldn't slog through it anymore; I was too much a samgirl at heart, among other things. It was a long time before I started again. I tried to catch up after season 9 aired, but I started back at the beginning of season 8 and didn't even make it as far as I had the first time.

Eventually in spring of 2016, when season 11 was finishing up, I tried one more time. There had been some buzz around really great recent episodes with a lot of old-school wincest vibes, and I couldn't resist. I started at the beginning of season 8 again, but that time I watched with valiant which was the motivation I needed to stick with it. We caught all the way up to the end of season 11—the season of Baby and Red Meat, to this day still two of my favourite eps of all time. Part of why it worked was also just that I'd had enough emotional distance from the fandom and from the show that I could enjoy it for what it was. It was awful sometimes (often), ridiculous and goofy...and poorly written. I consistently felt like Sam got shafted (so to speak) as I always used to when I was watching it the first time. But staying away from SPN fandom and just watching it with a friend was a great boundary—otherwise the fandom's obsession with Castiel and specifically with Destiel would've pushed me way, way away again. I had to actively disengage from that to be able to enjoy the show.

How sad, you know, that the SPN fandom which had once been such a font of joy for me was something I bristled so vehemently at. It was like this vocal majority was watching a completely different show than I was, and always had been. To me, it seemed like there were so many fans fundamentally misunderstanding what the show was about, and what it valued. Even if you don't ship Sam/Dean, their relationship is so clearly the point, the third main character...

I've regularly caught up on seasons of SPN after they're over since then. Every time I have I re-learn, by watching the show, that as scared as I am of them throwing away Sam and Dean's relationship as the core of everything, they don't. So many people paint Castiel as a much, much bigger part of the show than he is, and his relationship with Dean as so much more important than it is. And then I'd watch a season and be like, oh right. They're watching a different show than I am, I forgot. None of that is true.

I stalled out for a bit in season 14, I don't even really know why, but eventually caught up in time to be able to watch season 15 episodes in chunks, and then, after the pandemic break, as they aired. So now here we are.

It's over. What a wild, wild ride. I was 19 when I started watching this show, and now I'm 34. Supernatural has been airing my entire adult life. I met so many of my dearest friends through this show, I learned how to write, I grew up. I took the bad with the good. I quit when I needed to, and I came back when I wanted to.

I never thought we'd get an ending like this.

So.

Sorry that's so long, I guess I had a lot of feelings, to put it mildly. What better way to express them than to come back here, though! And I also owe a Sam/Dean fic to kelios which I'm about four or five years late on, and WOW am I full of inspiration to finish it now. Maybe this is what it'll take to get me writing again...