#robbie thompson
So exciting!!
‘Supernatural’ Prequel ‘The Winchesters,’ ‘Walker: Independence,’ ‘Gotham Knights’ Ordered at CW
HELL TO THE YES!! I’m so damn excited for The Winchesters!!
unpopular opinion like while i’m saddened about robbie leaving the show i do not at all understand whatsoever why in the world people think destiel will die out without him
- destiel started strong before robbie came onto the show
- robbie, while he has written a few good destiel episodes and was supportive of destiel in fan interactions on twitter, actually RARELY wrote any destiel because he RARELY got episodes that had cas in them
- we still have plenty of good writers who have written tons of destiel left like carver, dabb, and berens
I haven’t seen any of this wank but I’ve been informed it’s happening, and I was awake at 4am last night staring into the void thinking about Robbie and this issue, even before I knew this was going on, and I just want to report my 4am conclusions, and this is extremely corny but on the other hand I had no idea I could ugly-sob about a grown man I’ve never met happening to get a different job… :P
The reason we think Robbie somehow is responsible for Destiel is mostly because of the way he always opened up discussion ON the narrative in every episode where he got remotely meta. I know I may have been watching the show since season 2, but I’m only a fan in fandom doing what I do because Robbie ASKED me to join in the conversation in the open of 9x18.
I’ve never had a lightning bolt moment like that before in my life for any other story, when feeling something wasn’t just talking to us through a fourth wall break for ironic postmodern kicks for the writer’s ego or to make some point in the story about the characters or plot, even if it was addressed to the audience, but instead he actually talked directly to us as if he knew who we were and what we wanted to see, as if he knew how we were interacting and reacting to the story, and what we cared about and what we wanted to see. He ran around playing with the subtext gleefully and telling us in the show and out that it was real and valid and his episodes were basically giving us cookies for paying attention.
His episodes are basically the codex to the rest of the show’s subtext.
He opened a dialogue with us on how to read the show and what we could look for in it, and validated us for looking, but like @beestiels says, he was joining an ongoing story and enhancing the one around his episodes. Robbie episodes always came across as him being huge fan for the show even from his first episode: there was no NEED for him to make a plot point of his first episode that the Leviathans were revisiting season 1 episode locations chronologically. That was Robbie telling us, hello, I really like this show from top to bottom and I am here to be a fan of it with you, WHILE writing for it. So many of his episodes show this clever awareness of the entire show with the eye of someone basically writing fan fiction and wish fulfilment (he has no chill about making Dean dress up or dress down :P). Except he was being paid to do it.
The reason Destiel seemed to come alive in his episodes was because he was showing us what we already see when we look at the show - not just in that respect, but in everything, from the brothers’ relationship, geeking out about references to old canon, hardcore nostalgia for parts of the show Robbie was NEVER involved with. He pulled God!Chuck out of what was only really semi-official fanon and threw in the Samulet too as a parting gift, not just because he felt like it or because it kinda serves the overall plot, but because he knew we wanted to see it, and HE wanted it to happen too with about the same fannish delight in the concept. We know how he pitched Gabriel’s return for like the entire time until he got 9x18 approved, just because he liked the character and wanted a crack at writing some of these old school characters he missed his chance on the first time around.
The whole show came alive in his episodes.
BUT that doesn’t mean we’ve lost that because he’s going. It just means he made it his mission to show us how good it can be to be a fan of the show and to join him in enjoying it as much as he did? And of course for him, his fannishness is about literally every other episode EXCEPT for Robbie Thompson episodes. :P
When he plays with Destiel along with all the other stuff, it’s saying “look at this wonderful thing I found in this show we all love… doesn’t it make you happy?”
… yes, yes it does.
He might be moving on but I feel like he’s practically Mary Poppins’d the whole show on the way through so that’s how I’m choosing to see him leaving.
It seems quite clear to me that they’re not going the “easy” route aka taking what has been said in the main show about John and Mary as granted and fixing the “John wasn’t supposed to know” situation with some memory wipe or whatever.
Dean doesn’t seem to simply be narrating a story the way one can just tell a tale. He says he needs to uncover the truth. Something about his pen and journal makes me think about the original concept of Supernatural as the story of journalists investigating paranormal events.
His role in the narrative must have a deeper significance than simply “Dean popular, Jensen good”. Robbie is too smart for that. I do believe we’ll see Dean figure out that things he was told were lies, or at least not quite the truth.
I don’t think the prequel is going to just shape itself around what is supposed to happen later. I think the main show is going to be reshaped, as things we were assuming to be true turn out not to be.
The problem with prequels is that they already have a fixed point to end to, right? Well, you solve the problem if you reshape the audience’s understanding of the main storyline.
