On Shipping and Meta Analysis
The subject of shipping two characters with each other is so vast that I decided not to explore it all in one post but I do want to add a clarifying post to anyone who wants to read the analysis but doesn’t know what ”shipping” means.
The majority of the analysis I’m posting is centred on the character pairing of Dean Winchester and Castiel from Supernatural.
The reason I was compelled to start writing analysis of the show in the first place was how ambiguous the series kept this relationship.
To my eye their relationship was structured as a will-they-won’t-they not only through how they interacted with each other but also through how their character journeys played off each other within the subtext of the narrative.
Of course, I was well-aware the subtext itself was up for interpretation as nothing was stated in the actual text—through dialogue or physical action—in the narrative until the very final episodes of the final season.
(And yes, according to my weathered eye, it was confirmed though never stated.)
Meta analysis was my way of offering other audience members a way to partake in my reasonings for why I could see the will-they-won’t-they dynamic so clearly in the subtext.
Because I could see it so clearly they became my main pairing on the show. Theirs was the love story I was rooting for would manifest itself in the actual text and become something stated and acknowledged in the narrative aka making it part of canon. Them as my main pairing meant they were my most preferred relationship = the characters I was shipping together.
Had I seen no narrative evidence at all I would have had nothing to compel me to write the analysis to begin with but obviously I would never claim to be 100% right in any of my assessments. That level of hubris would be borderline insanity.
Meta analysis is about making sense of why a piece of media is making you feel so strongly for a group of characters, a pairing, or one character in particular.
It’s about sorting through your own impressions and making sense of the little details you’re picking up on subconsciously.
It’s never unbiased though I did try to write the already posted essay regarding Castiel’s identity crisis through as unbiased a lens as I possibly could.
Unbiased or not, meta analysis of characters you’ve fallen in love with is very gratifying. Like when you feel you find a thread you can pull on throughout the seasons, especially the ones linked to a specific character’s arc and there’s a repeating pattern through fifteen seasons of one character’s journey. So satisfying!!
Safe to say, Dean Winchester and Castiel remain two of the most complex characters ever created for television and I know that I’ll carry them with me always.
They were the reason I got hooked on learning more about human psychology and the doctrine of Carl Jung. Ultimately, they were the catalyst for what’s brought me to a deeper understanding of myself.
Oh, the power of good storytelling.