Oh, wow, this was a blast from the past! I had about the same trajectory as you did (except I never quite posted any fic in the fandom) and all of this sounds very familiar, from the "XF but with no mytharc and more ghosts" beginning right up to the end.
It boggles the mind that newer SPN fans are positioning things as if the early-season fans hadn't yet learned to care about gender/race/sexuality/culture being represented well! Those of us who were there before Castiel and paid attention to that stuff had pretty much all given up on the show improving that by the time Jo and Ellen died and weirdly, adding a white dude Christian angel to the cast didn't actually convince us it would get better. The reason post-Castiel fandom felt like it was starting from scratch on that several seasons later is because most of us who weren't starting from scratch were already somewhere else.
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It boggles the mind that newer SPN fans are positioning things as if the early-season fans hadn't yet learned to care about gender/race/sexuality/culture being represented well! Those of us who were there before Castiel and paid attention to that stuff had pretty much all given up on the show improving that by the time Jo and Ellen died and weirdly, adding a white dude Christian angel to the cast didn't actually convince us it would get better. The reason post-Castiel fandom felt like it was starting from scratch on that several seasons later is because most of us who weren't starting from scratch were already somewhere else.