say “either write Cas well or stop writing him but stop stringing Cas fans along,” I can get that. When people say “pick the queer romance storyline or pick the no-homo storyline but stop stringing queer people and/or shippers along,” I can get that.
But the destiel-or-no-castiel stance conflates these two issues. And as much as I understand the arguments being made in the article and its responses, I think it’s important to question that conflation, as well as the idea that removing Cas is an acceptable option to explicitly reject destiel.
Because if the writers fully reject destiel, no matter how they do it, Cas is an easy scapegoat to explain why people “misread” all that queer subtext into the show. Partly because he’s not the star of the show, yes. Duh. But also because he’s a nonhuman in a show that values humans over supernatural creatures; because he might be autistic and can’t always pass; because he doesn’t have the markers of “successful” masculinity and male sexuality that Dean and Sam do. Because he’s not ””“normal”” in a way that’s often tied to gender and sex. And the fact that he’s (unapologetically, wonderfully) weird and inhuman makes it a lot easier for the showrunners, as well as homophobic parts of fandom, to retroactively pin the queer subtext on him if the show goes unambiguously no-homo—especially if they no-homo by removing Cas.
For example, a heteronormative thought pattern might go like this: “Queerness is “weird”. Cas is weird (and so is Misha Collins). He’s also not as ~masculine as the brothers. Therefore he is the one who queered up the show.”
To be clear, I don’t think the destiel-or-no-castiel stance, as argued in that article, “blames” the subtext on Cas in the same way. But I also don’t think it’s entirely separate from the above thought-pattern. And I do think it gives the above thought-pattern too much of a pass.
But yeah, like I get not having enough faith in the writers to believe they could write Cas well as a non-love-interest character. And I don’t think that fans who agree with the stance are necessarily scapegoating Cas themselves. But I do think that the destiel-or-no-castiel argument gives the writers way too easy an out for their own queerbaiting, and heteronormative goggles, and gives them easy validation to scapegoat Cas. (/end rambling)
Yeah, you bring up a lot of points I hadn’t thought about. I don’t have the chance to comment on all of what you’ve said (I have to run out the door in a second), but I wanted to post it for others to see and maybe debate about.
I don’t know…I’ve very purposely kept myself out of the queerbaiting/queer subtext debate of recent. I used to be very a ‘THIS IS ALL QUEERBAITING RAWR’ kind of person (i still ofc respect that pov). Like, if you look at my posts from just a year-and-half ago, you can see that. Along the way, though, I felt like I was losing sight of what I aimed to be critical of, so I made an effort to stay quiet and listen to other queer fans.
It’s weird because my frustration doesn’t really stem from feeling baited re: deancas (the only time i felt explicitly baited was with the redacted ‘i love you’ in 8x17 that the writers expected us to somehow take platonically?? lmao like a lot of people had to read and sign off on that script before it reached the actors, and they all were what…just completely oblivious??? ok.)
My main issue is feeling baited re: dean’s sexuality. I think that’s why I had such a strong disconnect with this article, because the overwhelming emphasis was on a ship, rather than on how an individual character has been structured and written across ten seasons. So, to me, removing cas from the show, doesn’t solve that, right? It’s not like cas is gonna disappear and that’s going to somehow launch dean into a bisexuality-exploration arc. Dean will still be overtly-coded as straight, while placed into subtextually queer scenes with men. It’s a core component of his character now. I mean, who knows what the writers intend by it? Maybe it is all for cheap humor, placing a hypermasculine overcompensating man into situations where his sexuality is questioned. Maybe there are one or two writers who are well-versed in queer subtext and who are intentionally throwing it out to fans who share those readings. None of us can know/say for sure.
It doesn’t help that everyone has different understandings of what queerbaiting is and how valuable queer subtext is without canonization and the saturation point we’re reaching media-wise where there are more and more queer couples on shows, so why should we as queer fans accept just subtext? Why should we settle?
I guess, my point was, there’s a whole host of issues at play here…and so that’s why it felt so reductive to try and neatly shove all of that into a single thesis statement of ‘do this or DO THIS’ and then everyone will suddenly be satisfied or unsatisfied and be able to move on. It’s not that easy. I wish it was.