User blog comment:FTWinchester/On Reapers and Angels/@comment-11331875-20140604041630/@comment-11331875-20140604224134

Unfortunately, I don't have a link to that right now, and I don't remember the name of the guy who pissed everyone off on Twitter. (There's been a lot of Supernatural Twitter drama. The writers all seem to have sensitive egos and don't respond well to criticism, and many of the crazier fans--like the extreme bro fans trying to campaign to get Misha Collins fired--and the shippers--like the Destielers who want their ship confirmed as canon and on the show--can interact with them. The perfect storm.) The thread on it might still be up on another site, but it's been so long that it's probably buried by now. Here's a rough summary from what I can remember:

The guy responsible wasn't attached to Supernatural specifically, but to the CW itself. Adam Glass introduced him on Twitter as somebody who knew a lot about the show and its mythology. I believe the big fight started after "I'm No Angel" aired and people's confusion over reapers possessing people may have prompted it. CW Guy tweeted something like "Well, you know, since reapers are angels, they can possess people." Fans immediately started tweeting back that that was actually not the case, that reapers were completely different from angels, and that he was a moron for talking about stuff he clearly didn't know much about. Fan response was so huge, so negative, so overwhelming, that I believe CW Guy had to delete his account. I don't know if any writers stepped in to help him out, but I think after the fact, they were trying to shame the fans for scaring CW Guy off of Twitter. (He may or may not have come back later. I know Glass did after he got upset and flounced because people were criticizing him.) The part I remember best is fans consoling themselves that at least CW Guy wasn't technically part of the show so he didn't know what he was talking about (Glass must have lied to generate interest in CW Guy, they said) and reapers remained non-angels. Oh, the irony.

Now I suspect that CW Guy is more in-touch with the writers than was thought and they already had the angels are reapers thing planned by at least early Season 9. I kind of also suspect that the writers may have just added that part in after the big Twitter blow-up (which, by the way, should have been their wake-up call that fans didn't want them to change the mythos and it pissed people off), either out of spite or because "oooh, that's actually a good idea!" Which is less likely and not very nice to the writers, but at this point, I just assume the worst of them. Anyway, that's all I remember about it. You might be able to find out more by asking around. Hey, does anyone here remember more details on this?

And yeah, screw Carver. It's hard to tell how good or bad he is as showrunner compared to Gamble--she had Kripke regularly helping her with the show and in the writers's room in at least Season 6, she still had Edlund in her seasons as writer and producer, and Dick Roman's actor indicated that about halfway into Season 7, the CW brought Carver and his crew in to start altering the storylines and preparing to take over, so it's hard to tell how much was Gamble, how much was Kripke, how much was Edlund, how much was Carver, and how much was Singer. From what I understand, Carver is better at balancing the budget than Gamble was, he apparently has his storylines planned out to their conclusions, and he's giving Dean a mytharc of his own, but that's all I'll give him credit for. He wastes well-received storylines (Dean in Purgatory), drags out ones that don't go over too hot (Sam and Dean's fight in Season 9), butchers pre-established canon (literally everything), butchers his own canon (why Abaddon went after Josie), has terrible sense of plotting (he tries to cram everything into the last three episodes after wasting most of the season with bad filler), has terrible sense of characterization (Castiel in particular suffers from this when it's supposed to be comical, in my opinion), hires terrible writers (The Terrible Twosome wrote one episode in Season 1, were horribly received, and were not hired again by Kripke or Gamble; The Terrible Twosome come back on under Carver, write four episodes in Season 8 and another four in Season 9, including important mytharc episodes you should never give to your worst-received writers), kills fresh, good antagonists in favor of dumb or overused ones (Naomi vs. Metatron, Abaddon vs. Crowley), and recycles storylines that have been poorly disguised and without any of the original storylines's original heart and freshness (Sam's relationship for Amelia is Sam/Jess and especially Dean/Lisa redux, Dean's Mark of Cain is a clear rip-off of Sam's demon blood, basically all Castiel does in Season 9 is a terrible rehash of Anna's storylines). I mean, I could go on and on (you know I could). The point is, while I do believe a good portion of Supernatural's decay is because all of the original writers are gone and there are barely any new writers who are any good, I also believe that Carver is another good portion of its decay because as showrunner, his job is to oversee the writers, tighten their scripts, and make sure that everything's running smoothly. The fact that so much of the fanbase is unhappy with the show right now, that so many have stopped watching, that so many have lost their enthusiasm for it and expect an episode to leave them angry or underwhelmed instead of excited, says that Carver is not doing his job: to drop whatever is making the show bad and to keep and expand on whatever makes the show good. Kripke did this well because he understood the fanbase and what they wanted, which is why he is the best of all the showrunners.

At its heart, I think Carver's problem is that he wants to turn Supernatural into another Being Human or Charmed when what the fans want is the show they signed up for--Supernatural.