*cracks knuckles* This ended up being a very long thread.
I had to take a break from writing it to let my phone charge back up. But I need to put all my thoughts out there.
So come on this journey with me won't you? [1/27 ... yep. 27.]

I hope everyone understands me when I say things could have gone a different way for me, and right now I could still be one of those people who refuse to see Cas' love for Dean as romantic. [2/27]

There's a good chance if I hadn't been watching 15x18 alone where it was "safe" to process it, I might have gone into some kind of protective mode for my own ego.
Before 15x18 I thought it was sweet that some fans saw something between them that I felt wasn't there. [3/27]

Sure, it seemed like Dean had formed an extremely strong attachment to Cas. But they were "brothers in arms" right?
(This isn't about JA, please don't make it about that.)
But when I was watching 15x18 and it became more clear what Cas was saying, I had a physical reaction.[4/27]

I've talked about this before, how my body went numb and I couldn't move for a while after the episode aired.
My body actually went cold first and I felt the energy drain out of me. [5/27]

I didn't even cry when Cas, my favorite character on the show, was ripped away because I was in actual physical shock over the realization that I had been wrong.
I don't know what that says about me (yeah, I've got issues with my ego that I've been trying to work through), [6/27]

but my point is if that's how it was for me that night, I can see how there are still a lot of people less willing than I was to change their perspective on it. [7/27]

Of course I'll never defend homophobia, and I know homophobia and heteronormativity play a big role in a lot of people refusing to see Cas' love confession as romantic. [8/27]

But I can see how there could be a lot of people who invested years in this show and don't know how to handle it when (from their perspective) suddenly everything they thought they knew about Dean & Cas was wrong. [9/27]

They had, in fact, been wrong the whole time and Cas felt romantic love for Dean all along while they (the fans) never saw it or listened to fans who did see it.
If that realization was such a huge blow to me, I get how it's still too much for some people to accept. [10/27]

I can't defend them if they've been fans for years & years and were involved in the online fandom enough to have all the evidence laid out for them by other fans, because I don't exactly know what that's like. [11/27]

I only got into watching the show at the end of 2019. And it took me a while to look into everything different sides of the fandom have been saying about Destiel all through the years. [12/27]

But when I did finally open up and look at all of it, it makes sense to me now that Dean & Cas do love each other... romantically. They are in love and just never knew how to act on it.
I see now that there's so much in the show that makes it clear. [13/27]

These two idiots should have admitted their mutual romantic feelings for each other a long time ago. It would have saved them, and a large portion of the fandom, a lot of grief.

I know that NOW because I finally looked at everything Destiel shippers were saying. [14/27]

But I was only ready to do that after I was able to accept I had been wrong; something that's not easy for a lot of people to do.

Before opening up like that, I actually created a whole headcanon with characters that didn't exist on the show. [15/27]

I even created a romantic interest for Cas because I felt like he needed to be loved.
And as much as I would've tried to say back then that heteronormativity did NOT dictate how I saw things, I can admit now that it did. The love interest I imagined for Cas was a woman. [16/27]

I never even considered Cas falling in love with a man.

Yes, even when I was saying "Cas is a higher being and is more capable of unconditional love than humans are" I still didn't imagine him with a man. It never crossed my mind.
( << This is me feeling stupid.) [17/27]

I'm not proud of that; especially now that I can see how perfect Cas & Dean are for each other.

(I should add here that there's a strong chance making up a love interest for Cas has a lot to do with the attraction I was very gradually developing for Misha at the time and [18/27]

she was probably more of a self-insert character than I realized. But I was barely aware of that attraction then & I've been trying to move past those feelings for Misha lately for my own wellbeing. He doesn't even know I exist.
But that's a discussion for another time.) [19/27]

What I'm saying is, instead of seeing what was obvious in the show the whole time, I created my own convoluted story to try to fix the issue of Cas having no one who loved him.
They (mostly the network, imo) managed to have things just vague enough that [20/27]

I couldn't see the truth until it was laid out for me with the words "the one thing I want is something I know I can't have".
And even then, I was sitting there that night struggling to take in everything Cas was saying instead of listening to my ego side that was saying [21/27]

"I must have heard that wrong" and "Cas just doesn't realize how this all sounds to a human".
But Cas kept talking and my ego shut up so I could hear the truth and finally realize I had been wrong.
That's when the feeling drained out of my body. [22/27]

After that my world turned upside down (or right side up? Yeah.) and I realized I had been a jerk for never giving credit to the fans who spent years analyzing every interaction these two characters ever had. [23/27]

Once I got past the "Jamie, you've been an idiot and you should be ashamed of yourself" stage, I was ready to celebrate the idea of Dean & Cas being in love.
I couldn't wait for the final 2 episodes in which Dean would rescue Cas and they would get to be together! [24/27]

... Yeah.

But what I'm saying is I'm willing to admit I was wrong when I didn't see that Dean & Cas both had feelings for each other all along.
Unfortunately, there are tons of people who are not going to be open to changing their whole perspective like that. [25/27]

It's sad and I wish they would expand their views a little more. I feel like they're missing out on so much. But none of us can control how others think. They have to come to this truth on their own if they're ever going to at all. [26/27]

All we can do is feel grateful that this beautiful love story is obvious to us.
I don't like feeling heartbroken over the finale, but I'm glad my eyes were opened and I'm proud to be a Heller now.
[27/27]