In cockles hell

I feel like I need to hammer home the fact that I'm just one person with opinions and that none of this is meant to be treated as gospel. You've been warned lol.

I have been a Supernatural fan since 2012. Came back in full force in 2020 following the Destiel love confession, and spent a lot of time in 2020-2024 contributing to the fandom, writing, editing, making friends, asking questions and being silly. I invested a lot of my own time and heart in the Supernatural fandom on tumblr and in return I got friends for life and a safe place, a community to keep me company during my loneliest days, the encouragement to get back into writing and the opportunity to really expand on my photoshop editing skills.

Same goes for my friends, mutuals, and fellow fans. I've seen this fandom help them grow and learn and it's been one of the greatest joys of being here. Look at you guys challenge yourselves and dedicate yourselves and triumph, both in real life and online! I've seen the individuals on this site come together to donate to charities, to create crazy creative projects, to lift each other up and make each other laugh, all because we all happen to love the same TV show. We might have initially come here for Supernatural, but the fandom is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

And no, obligatory disclaimer that it hasn't always been great, it isn't great for everyone, this fandom is as vicious as it is wonderful. Somewhere in my Google docs is a half-written essay about all the things/habits/attitudes of Spnblr that drive me mad (actually, for real). You cannot have communities of people without conflict and all we can do, what I have done, is to set very clear boundaries for what we tolerate and not, just to give us some peace of mind. Because the other thing is that Spnblr (or tumblr, or online fandom at large) isn't a workplace, or a school, or a country. There are no regulations. No laws. No consequences other than possibly ostracization, blocks, and/or call-out posts. You can get banned by Tumblr but you have to go pretty far for that. Your garden-variety asshole behavior is not going to get you banned from this site and since this fandom isn't one cohesive entity, you aren't going to get kicked out of the community either since that's not how it works. We rely on social etiquette, but even that is tricky because it means something slightly different to old users than to new, and it can vary between fandoms (but I'll link this post that was also linked in Tess' post). We still try to set up parameters and adhere to them just to get some sense of order and I think it can be a very helpful thing.

In reality, though, this means that there's always going to be someone who leaves a mean, uncalled for comment on your art. Or someone who vauge posts about your fic premise or your problematic views. Or someone who tries to cancel you for whatever reason. The negative parts of the fandom are exhausting to navigate. It's an exhausting by-product of just wanting to write fanfiction of Dean and Castiel going at it, or reblogging fanart of Sam as the sacrificial lamb. Fandom doesn't work unless we put ourselves out there, unless we share our creations and additions to the world of Supernatural and build connection. Broken down to its bare essentials, fandom is just one million individuals going "hey have you thought about this" or "I love this show so I wanted to draw Dean in panties, look", and someone picking up your art piece and going "damn this is sick let me show this to more fans". And SO much magic is created through these simple interactions!!!! One day a show aired and a handful of people who watched it were inspired by it and boom, fandom created.

Do you get now why I love fandoms so much? Despite the fact that they're impossible to regulate, full of people who drive you up the wall, and really know how to kick you were it hurts? Lol. Can't have the good without the bad, but as long as we can learn to navigate the bad, we get to have it real, real good.

Don't worry, I'm going somewhere with all of this. This is just my way of building up to the issue of becoming passive and keeping quiet instead of speaking up. We don't owe it to fandom to continue to create it, not really, because at the end of the day we are all just people with a lot of other things going on in our lives and at the end of the day, fandom is a hobby. It's not like actual democracy where you do have an obligation to participate in order to keep the society we've built going. (Or whatever it looks like in your country. We don't all live in democracies.)

But, BUT, if we want to keep reaping the rewards (a nice escape from reality, a place to find friends and inspiration and space for self-discovery among other things), we need to keep creating fandom. I'm aware this is all really rich coming from a bitch who hasn't really been active in this fandom lately. Believe me, my heart is still in it, but like I said... we've all got real life stuff going on. Still. I constantly feel like the best thing I can do for the fandom is to keep adding to it, even if it isn't much. In the end, that's all it takes, right? Contribution. A message here, an added tag there, a 100k words long self-indulgent fanfic, whatever that looks like for you. This all sounds so obvious, none of this is revolutionary but whether it's a result of capitalism or just the general direction social media and today's society has taken us, I can't say, the fact remains that fandom has undeniably warped into a product with customers. So yeah, we create, but it's in an environment that's constantly trying to warp it into selling.

I've spoken about this before and I think it's so dystopian how much fandoms are taken for granted. You watch a movie, read a book, you want more, so you go online to the fandom and demand more content to consume passively, silently. You go on ao3 and expect to get more canon content. I wish I was exaggerating, and this is of course not true for everyone, but at large I keep seeing it, over and over. I know the popular theory is that normies found fandoms during the pandemic and don't know how to interact with it, but I don't know how much truth there is to it. Something has happened though, that's for sure. As someone in my 30s it's killing me. At the same time, I can't fault the young fans for not knowing what fandom used to look like before they were old enough to be aware of it. It's not their fault. But it is disheartening. I don't want to think about whether my fanfic is marketable!!! I don't want to make edits for the sole purpose of appealing to the biggest possible audience. I don't want to be a sellout and make things I don't actually am passionate about because engagement is sparse and if you want it at all, you need to play it safe like that. Fucking horrifying!

Combined with the fact that fandom today is a vicious as well as public space, where anything you say can be torn apart and scrutinized and people can be very mean to you over it, it really is no goddamn wonder people police themselves to death and what's left is this very, very quiet fandom. People were mean back in the days too, and in some aspects I do want to say that it's easier to be your authentic self in fandoms today, cause at least I when I was being cyberbullied over a ship it was in niche forums under a pseudonym. Kids today get actually doxxed over that kind of discourse.

Additionally, cliques was cited as a reason people are hesitant to reblog/add their two cents, both because they make others feel unwelcome and because some subsections of Spnblr have very strict readings of Supernatural and only accept certain fanon. As long as I've been in fandom spaces, cliques have been a thing, and a sense of community and belonging is so highly addictive that it's no wonder we'll never be rid of it. Friend groups aren't an issue, mutual-groups aren't an issue (I'd say for many of us it's the goal? Even I said that, that the very purpose of fandom is the connections we make), but yeah it becomes a bit of an issue when people get mean and exclusionary about it. I don't think that everybody needs to get along. I don't think everyone needs to be mutuals with everyone and that Spnblr needs to be one big family. But I do think, that if you're an active voice in the fandom, you kind of have at least a little bit of a responsibility to make it an accepting place. A "This place made room for you so what gives you the right to close the door for others" kinda thing.

I'm being deliberately vauge because you can read into this whatever you want. And the biggest irony, of course, is that I have real examples in mind and these people will not be able to read this post because I've blocked them (lol), but for everyone else... yeah food for thought I suppose. I'm sorry for this, but especially the adults. I know we're here to escape our adult responsibilities, but as much as it sucks it is kinda up to us to set good examples, or at least to not set bad ones.

See this is why this is a blog post and not an attempt at making a difference, because I will sit here and say all these things, and I will act as graciously as I can, I swear, but I'm not a perfect example of how to behave in a fandom. I used to be so tolerable and I used to move so seamlessly between different spaces until one day I didn't. Essentially I realized that the only way I could stick around was if I blocked two thirds of the fandom LMAO. So much for fostering community. But it is truly the crux of it all, that we're here looking for an escape from a shitty reality. It has to function as an escape, because if it makes us miserable then what's even the point. I think we need to be able to strike a balance between open-mindedness, grace, and allowing ourselves to make new connections on one hand, and realizing when and where to draw boundaries for our own sanity on the other. And part of that sacrifice is that yeah, ties will be severed. I am missing out on content that I could be sharing with others. But we all have to do our own thing. And do what we can. I have found my like-minded people and that is worth so much.

So yeah, coming back from that tangent, to the commercialization of fandom... we're all painfully aware of the growing distance between the fan who wrote the fic and the fan who read it, same with the fan who draws and the fan who looks at the fan art. I call myself a creator because I don't know how else to sum up the fact that I write, which is significant to me, and I make photoshop edit/gifs/innovations, which is also significant to me, but it's been said again and again how that too helps create a distance between fans and dividing us in ever-changing sections of creators and consumers. And I hate that. We're all the goddamn creators here, we make the fandom. In that regard there's no divide!!!

But people don't comment on fics anymore, people don't reblog anymore. And a thing that wasn't brought up in the survey post but I definitely think is a part of it sadly has to do with the lack of new canon/canon adjacent content (I don't actually believe we've run out of things to say lmao but there's no denying there was more to actually discuss when Things Kept Happening. Even after the show ended we had conventions, Zoom interviews, script drops, The Winchesters, other projects, Twitter drama, all of it. We still have conventions I know but there was definitely a lot more fuel thrown into the fire a few years back), only because I know a lot of people miss the vibrancy of post-November 5th. In comparison, yeah, it's quiet here these days. The proof of it is everywhere.

But so many fans are still here, and new fans keep joining, proving that this fandom isn't dead. There's crazy activity on Discord, on Ao3, there are people posting about Supernatural on Tumblr every single day, many of whom are going nowhere. I love this fandom and I hope it never dies and I think all the new fans are a gold-mine of evolving the fandom takes on Supernatural. We're so lucky to have you!

However, Tess is absolutely right when she says we need to revive reblog culture if we want Spnblr to keep being a thing... we need to talk in tags. We need to send asks. It's all up to us, we all call the shots. It's a joint effort. And I also know that so many people prefer to lurk, that they think what they have to say doesn't really matter and isn't worth saying or sharing, but if you've read this far and this applies to you I beg you to share that thought. There's room for everyone in this place and for every hateful individual there's at least five with hearts of gold. For every clique you disagree with I promise you there's a slew of lovely funny weirdos who watch the show the same way you do. We don't have to all get along or agree but I promise you that someone out there agrees with what you have to say and would love to talk to you about it.

GOD this all sounds so preachy but that's how you know it's written by yours truly. LOL. I know there are people in this fandom who don't like me and that's fine, but my intentions are good whether I agree with you or not. Like I said, I care a lot about this community. We're like a piece of paper folded over and cut into, cut out that part and that part and that one so when you fold it out it's a beautiful snowflake, connecting where it matters. Beautiful, right?

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Here is a link to the results from an attitudinal survey I did in 2021, if anyone's interesting. Disclaimer: I was hedging pretty heavily in an attempt to distance myself from Wincest, something that at the time of posting felt absolutely necessary in order to be heard among Destiel fans. To be honest I have always been pro-ship. Ship and let ship. If you dig around in the archives of this 15-year-old blog you're going to find Wincest. But the climate and the blogs I had inadvertently surrounded myself with in 2021 weren't very open to this, hence the wording in that particular post.

And lastly if you wanna discuss fandom with me my DMs and inbox are always open. I'm a safe space, promise. Whether you need a fandom cheerleader or a fandom therapist, I'm here lol, mutuals or not.