How it works

Pick one of twelve arguments this fandom is still having, say where you actually stand on it, and the page hands back the strongest version of the case against you — written to be persuasive rather than convenient to knock over. Nothing is scored. There is no meter, no percentage, no tally and no verdict about what kind of person you are, because a scoreboard turns a disagreement into a contest and you did not come here to find out what you think. You already know that. The open question is whether you could state the other side well enough that somebody who holds it would recognise it.

Underneath the counter-case the page does the more useful thing: it names what the two sides are actually disagreeing about. Nearly every argument that has lasted this long is one of three shapes, and telling them apart is most of the work.

The three shapes a disagreement can have

A disagreement about fact. The two sides describe the object differently, and somebody could in principle go and check. These feel unwinnable and are not — they are unwon, because checking is boring and arguing is not.
A disagreement about value. Both sides agree entirely about what happened and disagree about what it was worth, or about what was owed and to whom. Evidence cannot move these. Throwing more of it at somebody produces heat and nothing else, which is why arguments of this shape last decades without either side conceding a yard.
A disagreement about a road nobody took. The claim is about a version of the story that was never made, so neither side has anything to point at. These are the best company and the least resolvable, and working out which one you are in before you start saves about half an hour.

Mistaking one shape for another is the commonest way an argument goes bad. Two people having a value disagreement while both believe it is a factual one will trade evidence all evening and get steadily angrier, because every new piece of evidence gets answered rather than absorbed. The diagnosis line on each card exists to end that particular waste of an evening — and, occasionally, to tell somebody that the thing they have been calling a matter of taste could actually be settled by a weekend of counting.

What a steelman is for

The opposing case on each card is built at full strength on purpose. A version of the other side you can knock over easily is worth nothing to you: it leaves your position exactly where it was, defended by an opponent you invented. The point of assembling the best available case against yourself is that you find out which parts of what you think are load-bearing and which are decoration nobody has ever asked you about. Quite often the answer is that you were right all along and now you know why, which is a better place to be standing than being right by default.

Each card also names a crux — the thing that would genuinely move you, or a flat statement that nothing could, which is worth knowing about yourself before this comes up again. Each one lists the ground both sides already grant, because an argument that keeps re-fighting the agreed part is not making progress. And each offers a concession your own side can afford, since a concession is the cheapest thing you can spend to be taken seriously and almost the last thing anybody offers.

What this page will not do

It will not score you, rank you, or tell you which side is right. There is no correct column, no running total and no verdict at the end. One of the twelve is handled differently from the rest and returns three readings and no opponent at all: where an argument is about representation and about what an audience was owed, a fan page handing down a result would be treating something people have a real stake in as a personality axis. That entry is also the one place here that can never be given a line of generated prose, and the flag that refuses it is checked on this page as well as on the server.

Another of the twelve concerns how a story frames a fictional father. It asks about the framing and about the story, and it asks you nothing whatsoever about your own family — deliberately, permanently, and no version of this page will ever do otherwise.

It also quotes nothing. No line from the series appears here in any form, and no date, no episode count and no rating is printed anywhere on the page, because a figure nobody on this side of the screen has checked is worse than no figure at all. What this page contains is arguments, written here, about arguments other people are having.

Sharing the card

Every choice is written into the address bar the moment you make it, so the link sitting in your browser is the card. Send it and the person who opens it lands on the same argument, the same position and the same counter-case, with a line telling them the card is yours until they change something. There is nothing to sign into and nothing to send anywhere: the twelve arguments and every word of every opposing case were already inside the page before you opened it, which is also why it keeps working with the network switched off.

This is fan-made, and unofficial

This is an unofficial fan page about arguments people have concerning the television series Supernatural. It is a free, unofficial fan tool — an unofficial fan tribute, made for fun. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Warner Bros. Television, The CW, or any official rights holder of Supernatural.

Every proposition, every opposing case, every crux and every line of diagnosis on this page was written for it, and no dialogue, script text, lyric, still or artwork from any television series is reproduced anywhere in it. Iron Realms — the strategy game the rest of this site is about — is an original fantasy world with its own map, its own houses and its own art, and has no connection to the world of Supernatural. This corner is kept separate on purpose, and nothing in it should be read as suggesting otherwise.

Where the rest of them are

If you would rather be asked about yourself than argued with, the wing's quizzes are next door — what kind of hunter you would be, what you would trade and for whom, and how you would actually leave. The Supernatural section lists every quiz and tool in this wing, and the fan tributes hub has the rest of the corner. If you would rather play something than fiddle with a tool, Iron Realms is free and runs in a browser tab.