Destielgate: How the power of fans broke the Internet
By: Some Lionheart
Tags: Supernatural, Fandom, Media Criticism, LGBTQ, Media Literacy

Destielgate: How the power of fans broke the Internet

In a masterclass of media literacy and fandom as a force for change, Supernatural fans are making the show more entertaining AFTER its ending Some Lionheart Dec 17, 2020·9 min read

art by @lilnatli on Twitter

Very few shows stay on the air for 15 seasons. Let alone a scripted one with the same leads. Yet the CW’s Supernatural managed to achieve that feat… How?

I have one word for you: Fandom.

Fans helped the story of Dean and Sam Winchester’s quest to avenge their mother triple its original 5-season run and live long enough to see itself become a… Gay telenovela?

Ok. Let’s back up a little.

12 seasons of Queerbaiting: the Destiel case

For years, Supernatural has been a prime example of queerbaiting — a Hollywood trope that consists of creating homoerotic tension between two characters that never gets explicitly resolved on-screen. So much so that when I searched for “queerbaiting”, Google’s autocomplete suggested Supernatural without me asking.

Screenshot of my Google search for “queerbaiting”

This trope is so prevalent in mainstream storytelling that whole youtube channels are dedicated exclusively to unveiling the mystery behind several fan-favorite “friendships”: are they gay? Think Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor… the list goes on.

Supernatural’s Destiel (Dean + Castiel) case, however, is uniquely fascinating. Through a series of unplanned mishaps, showrunners created one of the best love stories ever told: a faithless, broken man is rescued from hell by an angel who betrays his divine mission and literally falls for this human. They kill and die for each other several times, eventually raising two children and dethroning the Abrahamic God together. Shakespeare would never.

The only problem? It was a queer love, and not what the show was supposed to be about. So the writers danced around it for 12 years, joking about it, hinting at it, but never outright addressing it or developing the romance explicitly… until about a month ago.

Destielgate

Thursday, November 5th, 2020. Georgia is still counting votes. Vladimir Putin is rumored to resign. Supernatural’s 15th season, episode 18 just aired, and “Destiel” is trending on Twitter over the presidential election.

Political analysts and regular people alike are baffled. But the #SPNFamily knows exactly what’s going on.

After 12 years of subtextual pining, Castiel, angel of the Lord, finally admitted to loving Dean Winchester… Only to receive a weirdly edited stoic response and die less than 40 seconds after coming out. Thus, earning Supernatural the Unofficial World Record on the fastest U-turn from Queerbaiting to Bury Your Gays (another timeless Hollywood tradition).

Both ecstatic they were right about Castiel’s feelings for Dean and enraged at the network for killing yet another gay character, fans took to action. Refusing to accept narratives that a queer person’s only future is to die tragically, over $58,000 was raised in Castiel’s name to the Trevor Project, the US’s leading organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to queer youth.

But while the angel’s “homosexual declaration of love” and subsequent sacrificial death became an inspiration for fans to organize and promise LGBTQ+ kids that they do “Deserve a Happy Ending,” the show chose to ignore it. In a very controversial wrap-up, writers delivered a finale worthy of Season 1. And while some fans were happy to have this kind of back-to-the-start closure, many believe it threw away 15 years of character development in favor of cheap sentimentality.

If you never watched Supernatural, this post explains exactly how mindboggling the ending was.

Now, closing a great series with a bad finale isn’t exactly new. Loyal fans will forever be angry at the last minutes of iconic shows like How I Met Your Mother and Game of Thrones. But still, Supernatural’s case is remarkable. Mostly because the self-proclaimed Worst Fandom Ever is still refusing to let their favorite show end Like That.

Bisexual Truth or Despair?

art by @liart_ez on instagram

Years ago, fanon (beliefs a majority of fans hold about a cultural product they enjoy that don’t explicitly align with the official story –or canon) designated Dean Winchester as bisexual. Despite showrunners’ efforts to depict him as a Straight™ womanizer, his interactions with other men, camera angles, and acting choices inevitably turned Dean into everyone’s favorite bi disaster. Either with Castiel, secondary characters, or even his brother Sam, fans filled the internet with videos, art, and fanfics dedicated to exposing and exploring Dean’s bisexuality.

So it’s easy to see why a large part of the fandom became angry at the amount of effort that (allegedly) was put into no-homo-ing one of the series’ most heavily queer-coded characters. Reportedly, most of Dean’s reaction to the love confession was edited out, and the episode’s title got changed from ‘The Truth’ to ‘Despair.’ Still, it was all speculation. Until…

The salsa on top of the taco came on November 24th. That Tuesday night, the Spanish translation of 15x18 aired on Warner Channel Latin America, under the original title ‘La Verdad’ (The Truth). In a hilarious twist of events, the Latin American dub translated “and I, you” where the original English audio had Dean answering “don’t do this” to his best friend’s “I love you.”

This, inevitably, caused the internet to lose its shit. Tumblr collapsed for several minutes, and the conspiracy theories didn’t take long to appear. Was this what they cut from Dean’s full reaction? Why did they cut it? Was it censorship from the network? Is this why the Latin American episode maintained its original title, whereas the US one got changed to “Despair”? Across the world, fans demanded answers.

And so, the show’s unofficial 16th season began.

#TheySilencedYou

Amidst the confusion the Latin American dub created, more international fans shared the outrageous choices other translators had made. It came up that in Germany, Dean used the F-slur in season 2. It was rumored that in India, don’t do this/and I, you got translated to “I am yours” instead. And an Italian fan went through hours of dubs to fake a leak where Dean also reciprocated Cas’s love.

Meanwhile, some felt homophobic censorship had robbed them of what would have been Dean’s explicit canonical reciprocation in English. So, naturally, they took to Twitter to protest. Through #TheySilencedYou, #TheySilencedThem, and #SomethingToSay, fans expressed their feelings of anger and betrayal at how all of the show’s female, disabled, and queer characters ended up either killed or forgotten.

These campaigns prove Destielgate outrage goes beyond the desire for a ship to become canon. The real craving is one for stories where disenfranchised folks are not disposable for the White Man’s realization. Specifically, Supernatural fans ask for The Powers that Be to acknowledge and engage with their concerns, instead of dismissing them as teenagers obsessed with two guys kissing.

Season 16 so far

Since the Latin American Spanish beginning of Destielgate, in a seemingly never-ending Season 16, we’ve had:

text post by @deanwinchesterapologist on Tumblr

Why this matters

For starters, this past month has been more entertaining than most of Supernatural’s official seasons. But beyond the hilarity of it all lies a profound truth about the importance of online communities –after all, it is the fans themselves who are producing and broadcasting this apocryphal season on social media– Destielgate is showing us fandom is a force to be reckoned with. Not only a creative one, though the over 5,600 new fanfics it inspired are impressive (all published since Despair aired).

Supernatural’s season 16 is positioning the fandom as a powerful community for positive change. Both in regards to LGBTQ+ representation in fiction and in the very real lives of those who will be positively impacted by fan-supported initiatives. Where casual viewers barely know what a Bechdel Test is, fandoms are probably the most media-aware communities. Because of our “obsession” with a story, devoted fans teach each other about the importance of representation, and then we try to transform how media depicts and shapes our world.

Campaigns like #TheySilencedYou mirror The Lexa Pledge and work to make queer voices heard. Through fannish activities, we are saying that our stories matter, and we’re demanding they be told respectfully. We’re keeping showrunners accountable, even after the show has ended, fans are joining forces to stop streaming it, attending conventions, and engaging with the network on social media.

Now, a bunch of strangers gathering in an online mob isn’t surprising. But the fact that so many people can gather around fictional gay angels and deaf hunters to demand media better depictions of disenfranchised folks is important. Particularly in a world where high-level TV executives are still over 80% white and 60% male.

art by @c_kaeru_ on instagram

If Destielgate has proven anything, it’s just how powerful fandom can be. The community gave us: access to translations (both official and faked), memes, alternative endings, art, fanfics, and thousands of dollars to help queer kids survive and thrive.

Versaphile, a fan archivist and writer, once said that “the fandom community cannot depend upon the kindness of corporations to maintain our platforms and tools. We must serve ourselves and rely on each other, because we share the same collective values and goals, and because we seek to preserve our own culture and history.”

This is also true for trusting Big Media to tell LGBTQ+ stories that honor our realities: we can’t keep depending on executives’ kindness. We must serve ourselves. And while that doesn’t mean letting them off the hook for profiting from our hope for over a decade, it does mean to remind us that, in the end, fandom is about the community itself. It’s about engaging with each other and taking the characters and stories we love beyond the limitations of canon.

Because when we tell our own stories, gay love always pierces the veil of death… and, after all, isn’t that what matters?