Loquacious Sesquipedalian

If you hardcore ship Destiel, please just scroll on by. Please.

Ok, I’m gonna get myself in trouble, I’m sure, but I gotta get this off my chest…

When I joined the fandom in 2009, it was common knowledge that it was a reactionary ship of ‘oh thank God they aren’t related’ desperation. Like, it was openly discussed/laughed about/known within the largest destiel group on lj- I know; I was there. There was very much the acknowledgement of ‘yeah this show is amazing and we really wanted something to ship and some people ship wincest and that’s great for them but we’re all people who were personally squicked by that idea but then now there’s finally Cas and holy shit we can ship something and it’s marvelous’.

Know, accepted, acknowledged- because back in 2009 while there were of course ship wars there was not the 'my ship has the moral high ground and I must find reasons that all other ships shouldn’t exist because my ship must become canon and if it doesn’t the reason is shitty writing’ fervor that there is now. Back then, shipping was shipping and canon was canon and for most ships there was absolutely no expectation they would ever become canon and that was fine. We weren’t looking to 'win’; we were looking to have a good time.

When I joined Supernatural, I was squicked out by the concept of wincest. Fully supported other people shipping it, but I was like “eh that’s one of my few remaining boundaries fandom hasn’t eroded; it’s not going to be my thing’- and it wasn’t, for the better part of a year. I shipped destiel like mad- I spent hours every day in the destiel lj group; I would skip college classes to hang out with those people and scream over those two. I wrote thousands of words of fic- I wrote what is to this day the only “long” fic I’ve ever fully finished, and it was destiel. I learned so much about writing and about myself and I was wrapped up in a ship I adored and I was having an AMAZING time- but the thing was, my favorite part of the show was still the epic love story of SamandDean. Platonic love story, but still, it’s a love story. It was and is the heart of Supernatural- it’s why I watched, and why it will forever be my favorite story of all time. They love each other beyond sense or reason and it was, for me, utterly transforming and healing to watch.

But around mid season 5, I started to see a change in the destiel fandom. Sam bashing was increasing exponentially every week, and he was beginning to be written very badly/as a 'villain’ in lots of destiel fics. It got to the point I was having to click out of most of the ones I opened out of disgust because of untagged OOC Sam/Sam hate. It was spreading and spreading, and I was sick of not being able to read fics that included the best part of the show- and that’s how I ended up tentatively reading a couple of wincest fics and realizing that oh, there he was still being written in character. There he was being treated fairly, even when he fucked up- and Dean, too.

I continued to write destiel for several months, but the writing was really on the wall. The community was changing to become more and more anti-Sam all the time, and I didn’t feel comfortable there anymore- so I kept in contact with several friends I’d made, and I shuffled myself over to wincest- and no one was incensed by that. There was no she’s become a witch; burn her it was just 'well shit we’ll miss your stories, but we get it’- and for a while, it was like that. Lots of Sam bashing, but largely still a “normal” fandom situation- And then destiel started to increase in popularity even more, and new people started being encouraged to just fucking skip or skim the first three seasons- aka the best and most critical part of the show in many original fans’ opinions. I literally have a friend that thought the show was just about Dean and Cas based on what she saw on tumblr before she watched the show. The perspective started becoming egregiously warped- hey watch this show, but skip the whole foundation, and don’t worry about one of the brothers, you only need to worry about this one brother and this other side character who was never meant to last past season 5- and then we started to have the rise of the antis, and people started clamoring that destiel would 'have’ to become canon, and they started pushing Jensen to talk about it at cons- even though he was extremely uncomfortable with that and had said that many times, and it wasn’t about shipping because he and Jared had openly talked about wincest at cons many times. It was the situation; it was the harassment. It was the fact that people were pushily demanding a fan ship be acknowledged in canon, and equating it to real life discrimination if it wasn’t. It was absolutely buck wild, and it only got worse. I love Misha, but he fed and fed and fed the madness until eventually he got a taste of how it all turned on him after he was like “I pushed to get this confession included; I thought you’d be happy”- not realizing that the fandom had ramped up to a point of escalation where they were never going to be happy with anything but full on canon, which was never going to happen. They had lost the plot completely- where subtext used to be celebrated and screeched over, it was now being tied together with a lot of red string by people in entire tinfoil body suits, screaming at the top of their lungs.

There is so much subtext to see with destiel. There’s plenty of text to see- but as a romantic ship, it is not canon, and it was never gonna be- and when it started, everyone involved knew that. It breaks my heart that that the joy of destiel as a ship got lost so completely under all the madness- because it’s a marvelous ship, when you just look at the ship.

Wincest is also a marvelous ship- and yes, the end was, in a way, a 'win’ for wincest- because the story returned to being what it had been all along, the epic love story of SamandDean- but within the confines of the show, that love is entirely platonic. Wincest fans know that. We love that. The show went back to its heart and soul- and that isn’t a romantic ship, and we’re more than good with that. That’s how it should be. Like Dean says- what’s dead should stay dead, and sometimes a fan ship should stay a fan ship. Sometimes they sail off into the sunset and become canon and that’s lovely, but you aren’t owed a canon ship just because you love it, or because it would be good representation, or because you have a whole corkboard of reasons why you believe in it. Representation is crucial; it matters deeply and it’s happening, but it’s not going to happen with every single ship you fall in love with- it won’t even happen for most of them. It won’t even happen for all of the ones that are cishet.

I don't buy it and I'd look at who is saying it and what their agendas are, because I'll bet it's single actor stans doing the whole bullshit 'my fave was so persecuted and oppressed for not being treated as the only worthy solo star featured in every shot *sob*' woobie conspiracy olympics thing again.

Sure, it's definitely A Thing that media productions pretend to be one big happy family where there's no conflicts and everything smells like roses all the time. Except a set is a place with a lot of people on it, so gossip tends to leak out sooner rather than later if it's genuinely bad. Yet we're supposed to believe the set was so very terrible it was toxic ... while the stars didn't just claim to be besties but were spotted by fans hanging out and taking vacations together, while almost every guest star still effusively praises the atmosphere as welcoming and positive, while many individual crew members chose to stay on that specific set the entire run of fifteen fucking years instead of working elsewhere? That's a long fucking time for there to be no substantial rumors of supposedly extant major disfunction.

They very effectively demonstrate how completely out of context all those moments are by how they describe them in their post. I mean, it should be obvious that thinking a shipper fanvid is giving you an accurate picture of canon is "Uh, have you actually been in any fandom for more than five minutes?" levels of clueless, and yet ...

I mean, I maybe get that when your friend is pushing 'OMG, THIS IS TOTALLY A THING!!!' you probably don't engage your brain too much in contradiction. But to just like, go around declaring to all sundry that you totes understand a show that is fifteen fucking seasons long because you watched a 20 minute, pointedly curated fanvid devoid of all context... I can't. No idea what the characters' interactions in the show are like in general - like if those types of references/jokes happen all the time between various male characters, not just Dean and Castiel. (Not even to mention all relationships in the show are built on top of how baseline insane Dean and Sam are with each other.) No idea what the context of those individual moments in the clips are - if Dean is talking up Cas to get him a date with someone else, the ship is pointedly included in the musical off-screen along with spaceships and robots in the non-canon fanfic act two, or if Cas only has a tape to return as a pretext to get into his room and steal something very important from Dean. Even if you don't consider any of that? The part where it still doesn't occur to you what a tiny fraction of fifteen years of canon it is for that load of vague implications-by-lack-of-context to be the "best" moments a shipper fanvid can scrape together? Oof.

I guarantee that Rob and Rich have made more money through cons and other SPN-related jobs than they have the rest of their careers combined.

Fan Fiction was a blink and you’ll miss it scene at the end. 

Rich was in 11 episodes:

The schedule:

They remain delusional about who has the power to make changes though:

At cons, he threw the writer under the bus for killing his character. He intentionally provoked his rabid fans and psyched them on writers and producers. In order to avoid the social media slander, which was new at that time, they gave in (biggest mistake ever) and rehired Misha. Ever since then, whenever Misha felt that he is not getting what he wanted, he would arm-twist the production by pysching his rabid fans on to them. This is how he got written in the scooby doo episode and also got included in the TVGuide and EW cover shoot.

You spoke about Crowley. The biggest difference between the characters is the actors who played them. Mark is a dignified actor who loves his craft. Misha, on the other hand, is a fame whore he doesn't care for actor or his character. He himself said that the reason he got into acting is to get famous, and it shows how he treats his craft of acting. When Mark came to know that writers can't write Crowley anymore. However, it was an on paper reason. The real issue is said to be the billing issue, Mark and Misha were asked to take a pay cut and lesser screen time while staying on a regular contract so that they can accommodate Mark P and Alex. Mark bowed out as it would mean his character would get impacted, but Misha stayed on as for him it was all about money and fame. He didn't care for Character what he cared for was the con money and Gish money. SPN was the vehicle through which he can easily exploit fans for money under the name of charities. All his charities were depended on SPN.

BTW, that's also not why Mark Sheppard left, as I recall: he left because the character was tired, sure, but the key part was his screentime would be cut AND he was asked to take a resulting pay-cut. An actor of Sheppard's caliber & reputation didn't need to put up with that: him having a spine and too much pride for effectively a demotion is not the same thing as standing up for his character, per se. The fact that Misha isn't actually famous enough to walk away from a demotion does not prove your point, it rather proves mine. The issue is with production's decisions, not Misha's.

And how the fuck I'm being wrangled into "defending" Misha I will never understand. I need a drink.