#anti extreme dean stans

[lukesfrag]

[lukesfrag]

Honestly as a Sam stan it's hard to choose one, if there was an option "All of the above" I would vote for that one, but since there isn't I voted for "Sam rarely relationships that weren't also Dean's, or Dean approved."

I've already mentioned this once but I'll do it again, it seems like Sam can't have friends other than Dean (or Dean's own friends). Whenever Sam tries to have a relationship other than those, 1.The person dies or 2.They reveals themselfs to be a villain, and I hate that a lot. "B-But Castiel and Charlie are Sam's friends too!" No, they're Dean's friends! They favor Dean, they talk to Dean more, they clearly favor Dean. It wouldn't hurt to give at least 1 character for Sam to have a bond that wasn't his brother, and I believe that's why there aren't many slash ships with Sam besides het ones, because they don't give a male character for him to have a bond.

The first option, to this day I hate what the writers did, Sam was clearly supposed to have his powers forever (they were given to him after all), but they took it away because it would make Dean weak 🙄🙄🙄🙄

The second one, I don't even need to explain, Sam must have killed Lucifer, after everything he went through he deserved the revenge.

The rest of the options was once again the writers favoring Dean. This becomes even clearer, especially in the narrative of S8 vs S7 (better, Benny vs Amy thing). Sam is clearly OOC in the entire S8 (no wonder it's the season I hate most with all my might), in addition to the fact that the fandom ignores what Dean did to Amy (imagine if it was Sam killing Benny in front of a kid that was the vampire's son? Dean stans would lose their shit.). Yes, I hate Benny and no one is going to stop me from that, Sam should have killed him. (One of the trials, should have been killing a monster that came out of purgatory 😌)

Sometimes I wish Jared had gotten out of this garbage show when they started treating his character (and him) badly like this. I'm sure this shit would get canceled soon after.

A poll for Sam fans, by Sam fans...

This sort of poll is running at another spn polls account, but they admit "I'm not a samgirl and I rarely read posts from Sam fans. I did a little research for this poll, but I can accidentally misrepresent views of Sam fans with these options." Points for self-awareness! As Sam fans who *do* enjoy the character and read posts by his fans, let's give the SPN fandom a better option, for all the fans. None blocked.

(* these are not Dean or Cas-negative observations, but observations about how the show treated the characters differently in very similar situations)

[dotthings]

tbh, the Jared stan/j2 stan phonies who pretend they support Jensen, while it’s extremely obvious the Jensen they are “defending” is a false picture of him where they require him to be their Sam/bros/j2 puppet only, and they specialize in manipulative narratives and spin trying to maintain that, are a unique issue. Different than what we might do about the ones who openly hate. At least it’s clear to more people when it’s open antis.

The backhanded passive aggressive “nice” Jared stans continue to try to rob Jensen of his agency and credit for his own project, his own wants, his rights over Dean, his caring about Dean, and twist everything to try to warp it all into their narcissistic Only Sam Matters perspective of not just the mothership but now, the entire spn universe. And it’s not just over Dean. They’ve stuck their heads so deep in the sand it’s stuck out on the other side of the planet, to run from the fact that Jensen cares about an inclusive spn universe.

The overt antis get a lot more attention. Those are low hanging fruit. They aren’t pretending any more. The ones who aren’t overtly full of vitriol can do just as much damage. In fact more. An openly hostile anti is far less likely to seem credible while they’re spreading false narratives.

[scoobydoodean]

Curious since everytime i see your blog you place yourself as some sane anti bullying saint, what exactly is the point of sharing a post by someone solely complaining about who is reblogging their posts, i doubt the wincest tag was used ofcourse, they likely went and checked the blogs and are monitoring reblogs then had to make a declaration of how sick they are bcz someone rebogged the post. Is this not unfandom behaviour? If someone starts whining about interaction best thing to do is ignore ofcourse and they are entitled to say what they want and interact how they want (perhaps shouldn't run such a neutral public poll but whatevs) instead of provoking or sharing but anyways till this point what's your intent of haha so many wincest blogs on that post. Your entire blog is so reactionary as a dean stan and its fandom faction its just so weird to me how your entire stick is complaining about stans. But whatever. It just very much seems like an invitation to bully blogs for reblogging and existing.

Hi. I never intend to cast myself as an "anti bully saint". I try to be thoughtful about what I reblog and post, but I have absolutely come up short before, as we all do. I think we can all try to do better and be more thoughtful all of the time.

I make fun of stans, yes—including at times Dean stans and JA stans (who are very adjacent to my space). I find SPNblr and its many various little segments fascinating to explore in their depravity and complexity and everything. Sometimes SPNblr is hilarious, sometimes it's embarassing, sometimes it's toxic, sometimes it's utterly unhinged. I like to explore it with my telescope and my compass and my map. Regular old Dora the Explorer over here.

Speaking about all our various groups in general and certain elements in them (with no names, no identifying info) is very different from targeting individual specific people and their posts by screenshotting them to mock them behind a person's back in a circle, or sending people hate mail. Wincest shippers have received a lot of hate in the SPNblr space, but that does not make them a protected class who I am not allowed to talk about in a general sense when they Do Things™️. Among some wincest shippers, there is an extreme amount of cognitive dissonance about what exactly some of the other people in the space are like and a naive belief that conduct is always appropriate in that community, and that is simply not true.

All of that said, let me tell you what happened in the christ-figure bracket, because I was there, Gandalf—before OP erased the evidence of what was going on. OP made a single post expressing discomfort, which I thought was funny. I reblogged it because I thought it was funny. It seemed to me based on their tone, that OP was approaching the situation with humor. I may be wrong about that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ However, the reaction to what they said was over the top from some individuals. I think a lot of people didn't see what went on however because OP deleted it pretty fast, but I did see it because it was still there on my first reblog.

In the notes of that post, there were, in fact, several wincest shippers fucking with OP trying to get themselves blocked on purpose. There were 3-4 reblogs with gifs and/or text referencing wincest including something to the effect of, "I hope Sam got Dean to fuck him on Easter Sunday". These things were stated in an attempt to mock and upset the OP and bait a block. I reblogged the same post again talking to my friend in tags, and said, #prev#there were so many wincest shippers on that post when I reblogged it. OP blocked them all now. Pretty funny.#but also sorry op RIP inbox/notifs. When I said that, I did not mean wincest shippers just existing on the post and reblogging things and getting blocked for it. I meant some wincest shippers intentionally trying to upset the OP with what they were adding to the post. By that point, OP had blocked those accounts. Then someone sent OP some fanfiction. I'm not sure if that occurred on the previous post or was DM'd to them. This got Sam kicked out of the christ-figure poll entirely. This is both extremely funny to me, and also I think a deserved outcome for the people who were being Like That™️, who did happen to come from the wincest community.

[walkergirlsposts]

Have to reblog this hilariousness. Can't stop laughing. "The Dean show!!!!!" What even was the plot?? 😂😂😂

Eric created the show hornylady he knows what he's talking about. Not you, someone who only drools over him because he's "hot." I doubt you even watched the show. You probably just watched Tumblr gifs. And who is "we?" You don't speak for all of us. You only speak for your cult. "Dean is the show." Must've been some helluva lame ass show you watched, if you watched it. What did your Dean do the entire time? Eat like a pig? Drink? Ogle babes?? No, tell me. If Dean is the show, what even was the plot??

[whateverthedragonswant]

Some things to note for this blog

I should have put this up sooner but honestly, I didn't think I needed to, until now. Everything below the cut.

GoT

When I post anything GoT-related, I am talking about the showverse only. This is why I do not include "asoiaf" in the tags of each post. While using the same characters and universe that GRRM created in ASOIAF, Game of Thrones is an adaptation. Which is why we don't see characters like Lady Stoneheart, Val, Gryff, or Dacey Mormont. (I know most of us know this already but I feel the point needs to be reiterated for some...certain stan groups in particular) Same goes for House of the Dragon.

I do post about Daenerys (and will continue to) and I can be critical of her but I still love her. She is actually one of my favorite characters in the show. But while I consider myself a fan of hers, I don't stan her blindly and I can see the mistakes she's made. I will call out her bad behavior while still maintaining my love for the character. I appreciate her dark turn because of the fact that she, as a woman, got to have that arc and make her own choices. It's incredible storytelling that was layered in since season 1 (though the execution of it in the end was botched here and there). Same thing goes for the Targaryens. For example, while I might not be a fan of Daemon, I do appreciate his character and Matt Smith's portrayal.

If I see any ridiculous Dany stan or anti Sansa bs in my travels on here, I'm calling it out. Not specifically to the individual(s), I don't do that, but I do respond to ridiculous claims made about characters, their story arcs, the writing, fandom bs, and the show in general.

SPN

I do love SPN but I am very critical of the series finale. But while being critical of it, I can understand why some decisions were made behind the scenes and it is what it is. It doesn't mean I don't hope that a reboot or continuation down the line won't attempt to fix the mistakes that were made (imho Dean's appearance in the finale of The Winchesters already started that ball rolling in a way).

I have been critical of the Wincest pairing in the past but that has been more about some of the behavior of the shippers rather than about the ship itself. I've also listed why I don't feel comfortable with the ship itself but I also have the attitude of ship-and-let-ship. So I'm not attacking the ship but just stating why I don't care for it while also challenging some of the shippers' assertions of how the show was intentionally going that way for the brothers all along as well as their misunderstandings of Dean and Sam's actual familial relationship.

I am anti John Winchester and will forever be. Any posts I make on this subject is not criticism of Jeffrey Dean Morgan or his portrayal of the character. This is not challenging Jeffrey Dean Morgan's or Jensen Ackles' opinions of the character, but sometimes can be a respectful disagreement (meaning I have a different school of thought on the matter for those who aren't able to grasp this everyday life concept). This doesn't mean I don't acknowledge Dean's, Sam's, and Mary's love for John. While I agree with JDM and Jensen that John did the best he could in that time, he absolutely could have done better and had many opportunities to. Not to mention what was implied that was right underneath the surface of the story the whole time and how it was confirmed starting in season 12.

Imho, the idea of Destiel went canon in the show, not the pairing itself. We only saw Cas' confirmation of his feelings and how it all connected back to Cas' own story line over the years. By Dean not having time to respond one way or the other, I believe the show intended to keep that open-ended and ambiguous. So people can still speculate on his feelings should they so choose (personally, I think Cas was extremely important to Dean, more important than antis feel comfortable acknowledging which is why they consistently do their best to undermine the 15x18 moment and attack anyone who asserts that Destiel is canon).

I am very much pro-Dean (not a stan but a huge fan), pro-Winchesters 2.0 (Dean, Sam, Cas & Jack) or TFW 2.0, pro-Jack, pro-Jack and Cas as family to both Sam and Dean. My posts will usually operate from this stance.

If I see any ridiculous anti Dean, anti Destiel bs, pro-toxic codependency bs in my travels on here, I'm calling it out. Not specifically to the individual(s), I don't do that, but I do respond to ridiculous claims made about characters, their story arcs, the writing, fandom bs, and the show in general.

The Winchesters

I am very critical of The Winchesters but it is not personal criticism of Jensen or Danneel Ackles. I am not critical of it for the sake of being critical or fandom drama; I am looking at it through the same critical storytelling eye I look at everything else. I focus on the story and not anything beyond that. Whatever feuds the fandom drama queens believe are going on between Jensen and Jared, Danneel and Genevieve, Jared and Misha, etc, I am not engaging in any of that nor am I going to allow it to taint my perspective as a viewer.

911

While I have been critical of certain relationships for Buck and Eddie (like BuckTaylor, BuckAli, EddieAna, or EddieShannon for example), I am not completely critical of the female characters themselves nor am I anti them (their characters all served a purpose in the story). Except Abby and that was due to her severe mishandling of Buck. But even then, as long as she stays far away from Buck, I'm good with her and hope she finds her own happiness.

I still believe in the possibility of Buddie but I will admit that the season 6 finale left me dumbfounded, even knowing what was happening bts. So I have not posted as much for this pairing or fandom because I'm waiting to see how season 7 will go.

Speaking of which, I am very critical of the writing of the last two episodes of season 6 especially, not just for Buddie but all of the other characters and relationships as well.

Big Sky

I am very critical of the writing of the last season as well as the push the show made for a certain pairing to happen (Beau x Jenny). It is not criticism of Jensen Ackles or of Katheryn Winnick (I am a fan of both), nor is it criticism of the characters Beau Arlen or Jenny Hoyt (I also love both). I honestly believe Jenny's (and Cassie's) character got shafted in the last season as a bid to stay on the air by the showrunner. And I am very critical of that showrunner and some of the decisions he made that I think sunk the show the final inch over the edge into oblivion.

Celebrities/Actors

While I am a fan of Jensen Ackles's career and try to be supportive, this is not a stan blog. I will not be posting about Jensen's personal exploits (outside of FBBC and a social media post here and there possibly), any gossip/rumors surrounding Jensen, anything about his marriage to Danneel, etc.

I will not be posting anything about Danneel Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins, etc.

I only post about people I admire and it's usually in relation to their acting and/or portrayals, or directing (like Miguel Sapochnik for example). I appreciate talent where I see it.

[maipareshaan]

I am trying to restrain myself lol bcz i truly get deranged when i see these extremely whiny moralising D*stiel/D*an blogs and its not that i have strong feelings for the narrative its that i esp in the start had very neutral feelings that would swing to feeling sad over D*stiel not happening, feeling like the toxic family narrative is so horrifying and with regards to it feeling this pretty much from a Sam viewpoint unlike their Dean viewpoint, besides personal whining and maybe some exploring of narratives in a negative way i was very much fine with wincest/bronlies, esp in interaction and like the amount of harrassment, the vitriol that came out of that side not even to shippers but literally anyone not watching it for and wanting narratives they want and not throwing a tantrum over it, it has truly turned me off bcz the hypocrisy of their whining is astounding, to be this stuck on an attitude of a fictional man deserving better and constantly dogpiling of anyone not whining with you but then acting like some intellectual anti harassment anti stan doing media right person is just laughable to me. Not saying i wasn't ridiculous but the core behaviours are the problem and are Dean stan focused, its not an anti stan stance, its a stan stance, and yes you can whine and complain and not demand anything but again that's what stans do, they do it for seasons and narratives, you do it too constantly in peak deranged manner with months of ongoing harrassment and think this is not the same cuz its for the finale. Ugh.

[lukesfrag]

That's you, OP 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

ever ask yourself how many times do sam & dean actually apologize in supernatural? who's more conscious of money and getting food? how sam & dean's feelings about john change over the course of the show? is sam actually more scrutinized for gender expression than dean? who most often disposes of corpses? WELL! I've finally finished my incredibly, long, in depth rewatch notes document! And it has the answers to all those questions and more!

[meowmeowmessi]

Comments like ‘Why are you making Dean all about Sam?’ to bibros/wincest shippers make me go ??? Because dude. Did you even watch the show? DEAN makes Dean all about Sam, it’s all him.

You took the words right out of my mouth, nonnie! I'm not the one who told Sam that watching out for him is who I am. I'm not the one who told Sam that there ain't not me if there ain't no him. That was all Dean. And no, you cannot bring John into this by spouting off some bullshit about how he sAdDLed Dean with the responsibility of protecting Sam, because it was made quite clear in s2 that that is not the case. If hellers and Extreme Dean Girls want to hate someone, they should hate Dean -- not Sam -- for being so protective and possessive of Sam lmao. I didn't force Dean to make Sam the centre of his universe; Dean did that all on his own. And he's totally cool with it, so any point these people try to make about Dean bEiNg miSerAbLe wiTh sAm aNd nEeDinG tO bE fReE oF hiM is moot. Hellers want Dean to fuck Cass, and Extreme Dean Girls want Dean to fuck them, but luckily Dean's got taste, and he'll forever fall into Sam's orbit. And there's nothing they can do about it <3

[touchstarvedsam]

hey check out this douchebag 💕

[bluejaybug]

i think a lot about the millennia long trauma cas suffered from the very beginning of his existence and how even when he was free he WASNT free because he wasn't free form dean and even then he was imprisoned in abuse because someone who's lived in suffering won't know how to differentiate from anything else: suffering is the norm for him. like the pavlov dog experiment. he died loving someone he barely knew because he thinks he deserves to be hurt, and that the hurt he's suffered is equivalent to love when it comes from dean winchester. idk i just think about that a lot. how he never really escaped from the abuse. it kinda breaks my heart.

[prince-of-elsinore]

A few personal thoughts on the Samdean shipper survey results (which overall I very much enjoyed reading):

1. Season 2 supremacy :))))

2. I'm just a little surprised at how many more fans favor Sam than Dean, but there are a few things it has me considering: 1) this is only a snapshot of Wincest fandom at this point in time and I seriously doubt this was the case in the early days. Obviously once D*stiel became so big it drained a lot of Dean fans off into that ship. This is very specifically people involved in fandom in the post-finale era, and I wonder if Dean's death may have been a further drain on Dean-fan engagement. And 2) sample bias, maybe? The survey did get a lot of results, but considering it was made by a Sam stan and circulated heavily among other such blogs, I wondered whether that would skew results. Of course it's impossible to say. And 3) not sure if this is, again, sort of an accident of timing (with many Dean stans disliking the finale) but it seems to me like Wincest tumblr itself is surprisingly Sam-leaning and I'm curious whether that really reflects the wider Wincest fandom (I don't say Bibro b/c to me, you have to love both to be a Bibro) or whether they've naturally migrated towards each other on this particular platform and are therefore over-represented here. I have no idea what twitter or discord fandom is like. Finally 4) I'm REALLY curious to know how different it would look if Sam and Dean equally had been an option. I'm guessing that most people only favor one brother very slightly (me!) and might rather choose that, or do genuinely love both the same. I would guess that Sam and Dean together would receive nearly as many votes as either separately--but maybe not! Maybe stan mentality has permeated fandom too much :\

3. It would be really interesting to see how favorite character lines up with top/bottom preference. I think I'm an outlier in that I prefer my fave (Dean) as a top 😳(not a stickler about it though)

4. Now for just a little salt lol: guess my fandom annoyance answer got subsumed into sam v. dean drama, which I'm surprised didn't get more answers tbh. Never saw dean negativity named as an annoyance but saw dean negativity itself in the answers...🙄 The man is far from perfect but wow am I ever tired of seeing the word "abuse" thrown around (I mean I expected to see it, and it was just a couple answers but I still had to read 'em lol. Sometimes I wish I'd never dipped my toe into this fandom so I would still be blissfully ignorant of this take). Also if I had done that survey more recently I think I would have had more to say, I've sort of just recently put my finger on some fandom trends I don't like. I don't wanna go into detail but... suffice to say I think a lot of things some (especially younger?) Sam stans are very into, I am not into. Love Sam a lot, but often just don't vibe with the sort of headcanons or takes his stans push, and it's why I unfollowed some stan blogs a while back. Feel much happier now in my Bibro/Wincest/Platonic Weird Brothers corner 😌(All love to you if you favor Sam, no skin off my back. It's not the fact of favoring Sam that I dislike, it's more to do with other tastes that somehow seem associated and circulated heavily among certain blogs, but aren't common to all Sam fans. Safe to say if you're in my notes regularly this doesn't apply to you)

5. Okay finally to end on some positivity, I'm happy to get such a long fic rec list and felt inspired to share a few of my fave Wincest authors, along with stellar fics of theirs. Just the first ones that come to mind:

Dyed_Red--Squint into the Sunset | Glare into the Gloaming lovetincture--Collision Course Morgan--Midwinter Montana sonofabiscuit77--A Life Most Ordinary (all their AUs are great) thecapn--Baba O'Riley and Eleanor Rigby walk into a bar (their AUs are also great) killabeez--Carry Me Over the Sky (one of my first fandom faves!) 

[corancoranthemagicalman]

Just saw a Twitter post that said "damn I hate being a Cas stan cause everyone in this fandom either hates cas or is an insufferable heller who makes everything about cas about Dean :/" and it's like sweetie maybe if you got yourself a tumblr you'd see that all the casgirls are just literally on castiel dot com and not on j@rpad central.

[dyed-red]

Not looking to raise any wars but, do you think if the actor who played Castiel was more conventionally attractive (re: Keegan Allen in a trencoat for ex) would people be more into towards destiel or samstiel or dean/Sam/cass pairings? (Ignoring castiels entire arcs post s6)

i'm a little ??? at this ask, considering that destiel has over 100k fics on ao3:

i get that not everyone is into misha collins but plenty of people find him attractive, and when he showed up in s4 he was standard cw-level cutie?

if he was shirtless with ripped abs (a la Keegan) in scenes with sam, then sure, there would probably be more sastiel, but i don't think the handsome-factor of misha collins or jared padalecki, or their mutual chemistry in a scene, has all the much to do with the dearth of sastiel content.

mostly the lack of overlap in content and the comparative lack of wincestiel or sastiel is because of bullshit shipwar stuff.

since you said 'not to raise any wars' it's under a cut, and mostly just repeating things that are said elsewhere.

as far as i can tell, there used to be a lot more multishippers, but that ship wars embittered people and that infighting led to "this is the Only ship" mentalities which deterred people from shipping cas with sam, or multishipping sam/dean/cas?

originally there was wincest, then cas hit the scene in S4, and for a while everyone was a-okay with adding more shippable characters to the milieu. actors (including misha collins) joked about wincest and shipping and the show and its creators didn't mind having fun with it.

over time, in fan spaces, more extreme voices gave rise to destihellers who were all too happy to bring morality and anti (fanpol) rhetoric into spn shipping spaces to prop up their ship and put down wincest. wincest(ies) responded in kind by basically saying fuck you to destihellers and multishipping declined as wincest shippers became more insular.

as it progressed, some hellers and misha stans started saying misha was the reason the show was still on the air and started more or less cutting sam out of the narrative and being dicks about him to prop up their ship, and sastiel never took off because fans who liked cas tended to end up in destiel spaces where the 'profound bond' between cas and dean was the rule of order, and where cult-like bullies didn't let people have divergent opinions or ships.

meanwhile, wincesties started calling hellers delusional for their opinions on the show, sometimes in ways that were earned (The Cult really is full of a lot of bullshit) and sometimes just to pick mean fights and put down people's headcanons.

and so it goes?

there's more to it, with extreme stans and their bad behavior and the rise of purity culture and sneaky radfem rhetoric into shipping (and leftist) spaces and the fervent 'everything is queerbaiting' stuff that took off that drove wedges people people and left a bad taste in their mouths over time. shipping became activism for some people and shipping stopped being a thing that was joked about at conventions or safe for the show creators to poke as much fun at because people were taking it way too seriously and demanding that things 'go canon'.

that self-righteousness was infuriating to others, especially wincest shippers (and sam stans). and when you can't stand the people shipping something, you're a lot less likely to ship it yourself, or to enjoy the content being made for it, regardless of what's on the screen. so that's another reason sam/cas didn't take off, and why this potential ot3 never got off the ground. also, ot3s tend to have a lot less content in general than ships with only two characters. fewer people in general are into poly ships, i think?

also, in all this, i'm certainly not unbiased.

i watched the kripke era as it was airing, shipped wincest from the pilot, and when cas came on the scene, my multishipping heart sat up and took notice and went "now that's fun". but i stayed out of ship spaces and fandom in those years and just read fic and mostly didn't know ship wars were in full swing until i came back to fandom almost a decade later and went... "ah, i see."

meaning that when i got back into the show, to my personal opinion, the heller side was deeply frustrating and it turned me away from shipping destiel, despite having enjoyed it fine enough before interacting with the fandom. now it's a NoTP for me. mostly because i couldn't stand most* of the prominent voices on that side except for a few people who were multishippers and also shipping wincest, and even then some of them fell into The Cult of Goob and i had to unfollow 🤷‍♂️

*also just as an addendum, i do still follow multishippers and at least one destiel (non-wincest) shipper, but those are specifically people who i've found to be lovely and non-assholes and who love sam and don't spout the type of entitled rhetoric that soured me off destiel.

[alignallofthelights]

Dean Cas Wedding Tweet Report

Now that the dust has settled, I wanted to do a quick after action report on the #DeanCasWedding trend. For those who aren’t aware. #Dean Cas Wedding trended on Twitter, based on some recurring Supernatural castmates sending a tweet about Dean and Cas getting married at the roadhouse. 

Destiel fans ran with this theory and created a fictional wedding between Dean and Castiel on Valentine’s Day. The hash tag trended for 8 hours, and peaked at #4 on Twitter’s United States trending top 30. In the end it generated 46.3k tweets. 

I am doing a deeper social media analysis of the hash tag findings to better understand Destiel fan activity, during this campaign. Further details are shared here as follows: 

Overall Campaign Metrics

As posted before the majority of this campaign was based on retweets - 67% of this campaign was based off of retweets from 13.7k original tweets. 33% of the campaign came from original content. For scale that means of the 46.3k tweets that were generated during the Dean Cas Wedding trend ~30k came from retweets. 

This means that the Destiel fan base has a predilection to retweet and spam  continuously to get their hash tags to trend.

Size of Destiel’s Fanbase/Stanbase

So this is the interesting story. Of the individuals who participated in the campaign there were 2.6k active contributors, 5.3k total contributors, this means we can deduce that 2.7k or so were just retweet contributors. The 2.7k numbers are “passive” contributors in that they did not create any new content with their tweets. While the 2.6k active participants are the tweeters who created original content that fueled the hashtag. This means that 5.3k people in total fueled enough content to create a 43.6k hashtag campaign. 

Supernatural’s Viewership Cross Reference

For context the average Supernatural episode in the last season attracted 1.1 million viewers. Quick facts to put this in perspective: 

For every 208 general fans of Supernatural you will find 1 Destiel, Misha Minon, or Destiel Extreme shipper stan

Destiel as a fanbase is less than 1% of the Supernatural audience/fan base (precisely less than .5% of the general audience)

The average Destiel fan tweets 5-8 times to get something to trend

When an extreme Destiel fan screams that “they made Supernatural what it is”, “that they are the majority of the audience”, and that everyone wanted “Dean and Castiel together”, show them these numbers. All in all, the reach of this fanbase is quite small. Their hash tag campaign had an overall reach of 3 million people. 

Cross comparison: Destiel’s hash-tag vs. Walker’s Live Tweeting

For scale Walker reached 12 million people when they trended for “Don’t Fence Me In” with a fraction of the tweets they had (46.3k vs. 11.7k). 

#DeanCasWedding (2/14)

#Walker (Don’t Fence Me In, Live Tweet 2/11)

What Corporations Value

This is why Supernatural and CW executives do not take Destiel and their hash tag campaigns seriously. 67% of this campaign is basically just re-tweets, which is what devalues this campaign in terms of meaningful social media engagement that corporations and stations look for. The value of the campaign is not there despite the high tweet count (Trended at #4, and generated 46.3k tweets but with no substance). The problem for Destiel fans is that their conversation is all insular, which is why the reach is so small. You have a max of 5k people talking about a ship, and a less than 3k actually pushing it. It is basically just these small .5% of audience members talking to each other and passing the ball between themselves back and forth.  

Destiel’s existing echo chamber

If you are interested in knowing who those individuals are look no further. I broke down the Top 10 Most active members during the campaign and top 10 for original tweets and retweets. You may see some familiar faces: 

Lastly, we will delve into the age of the twitter accounts who were active during the campaign. 

As seen here a sizable portion of this tweet campaign comes from twitter accounts that are less than 1 year old. This is an obvious indicator for multiple accounts and fake accounts. It shows that the two biggest splits here are twitter accounts that are less than 1 year old, and others that are 6 years or older. Combine this finding with the retweet threshold (67%) it’s highly likely that there  is some double dipping going on here. Remember the average Destiel account retweets things 5-8 times. As we can take a look from the most popular tweeters during the campaign some of them tweeted an excess of 400 times just from one handle. The top 10 tweeters during the campaign generated 3k tweets just amongst themselves.  

As such it’s likely that the 5.3k number shared here is inflated, with much of this engagement coming from fake accounts, double accounts which aren’t a genuine reflection of actual population size. I hypothesize that about a third of this fanbase is a result of multiple accounts. Especially since many Destiel fans say that they’ve been watching since season 4. How is it that a third of the audience just came aware of Destiel in the past year, when Castiel has been on the show since Season 4? 

Summary

The Destiel fans need things to cling onto. Often when they try to trend spontaneously as in response to Misha’s instagram video on the 13th the trend only got 8k tweets before it collapsed. They need to latch onto a social justice themes to trend (Eileen), they need to latch onto Jensen and Dean’s fanbase along with LGBTQIA+ representation that exists in other fanbases to partner in order to trend (Shameless Gallavich, MCU’s Stucky and Teen Wolf’s Sterek). But even for all of their efforts it doesn’t really mean anything in the end, when you look at the numbers and review the context of their campaign.

In conclusion, I know this is a long post but I wanted to double down on a few things. The Destiel, Misha Minon, Extreme Destiel fans are not the majority. They don’t have a lot of power amongst their group. The economic value of this hash tag campaign doesn’t compare to the likes of live tweeting events generated from the CW during their live tweet shows: Batwoman, Legacies or Riverdale. Definitely not Walker. Even when they try to trend with all their might they can’t equal or make a significant dent in social media engagement that means anything to the network. This is why the CW has ignored them. As such I hope that this tumblr post can help people understand how small the fanbase is, and how their bullying and smear campaigns are insignificant and don’t amount to anything. I hope this number can give people perspective and context to what this crazy stan base has led to with all their tantrums, doxing, anti-voting sprees and generally toxic behavior. Ultimately I hope this post shows that they are insignificant. Let’s let them be so. 

[samisadeangirl]

Agreed. Dean didn't bring Sam back into the hunting life--as the above post said, Dean accepted Sam's decision after the Woman in White hunt and drove away. If anything, it was the YED who dragged Sam back in by killing Jess, though it was still Sam's choice to avenge her (as opposed to simply mourning her and moving on with his normal life). And again like OP said, Sam continued to choose this life--he chose to keep hunting after Dean's death in S3, after their separation in S5, after leaving Amelia twice in S8 (and the first was BEFORE Dean returned from Purgatory--Sam left because Amelia's husband had returned), and many more, including after Chuck had been defeated. Claiming that Dean or anyone else "forced" Sam to keep hunting is taking away his agency.

I too can't stand how too many Sam stans try to turn him into this poor little woobie and/or perfect cinnamon roll. Sam Winchester is a BAMF who stood up to Lucifer himself, and his mistakes and flaws are part of who he is and make him into the complex character we love. Likewise Dean isn't this horrible meanie who's abusing poor widdle Sammy-poo (see previous statement about Sam being a BAMF). Yes, Dean made mistakes that hurt Sam, just like Sam made mistakes that hurt Dean, but both did so with good intentions and/or as the result of trauma. This take also ignores Dean's many good qualities, such as his nurturing/caring side and of course his love for his little brother. (All of this also applies to Dean stans and Cas stans.)

Am I the only one in SPN fandom that doesn’t think Dean brought Sam back into the life? I keep seeing posts going around and I’m just…. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Dean wanted his brother with him so badly. Wanted to be a family. But I just don’t see this narrative of “Dean brought and kept Sam in the life.” He drove away. He was going to accept what Sam chose.

I feel there’s this weird thing where Sam’s main themes get blurred and muddied with other character’s motivations. Autonomy, or lack thereof, is absolutely Sam’s main theme throughout SPN. Dean for sure contributed to that in many ways (not quite in the way more anti dean stans insist, but that’s a whole other post,) but he did not bring Sam back into the life in the way people are now accepting as canon. This is not the autonomy issue people make it (with Dean anyway- clearly the destiny part changes that.) But Sam did CHOOSE this life. Over and over again. For many tragic reasons, but he chose it. Let Sam own his autonomous decisions, don’t infantilize him in this.

Two of my main gripes in fandom are these takes:

Sam: always baby, always victim, always right. It strips away the badass Sam. It dilutes his passion and stubbornness. It stunts the growth he showed. It makes him more “divine” and less “human.” I LOVE Sam’s mistakes. Always made with the right intentions. He is so emotionally intelligent that when I watch him go through that struggle my admiration of him grows exponentially.

Dean: always abusive, always violent, basically giant pig. It strips away Dean’s heart, and completely removes his trauma that LED him to his struggles to cope. The way people talk truly does make it seem like Dean is an irredeemable villain

Sometimes these takes make these characters into flat arc, non interesting and non relatable figures.