#denvercon

[bedlund]

historians should spend more time researching major supernatural fandom extinction events

[he-was-a-star]

My brain at the moment is a mix of: JACK KLINE, midam, IM GOING TO EAT JAKE ABEL ALIVE, and Wtf was denvercon

[rennerator]

LOVE LOVE LOVE HOT HOT HOT Look at THIS MAN!!!!!!! S2 AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW Thank YOU!!!!! Thank YOU SO MUCH for this!!!!!! You are AMAZING!!!!! :D <3

why do i love this picture

[the-rollerchloster]

Parasocial relationships are strange. Parasocial relationships in a fandom like this one can be even stranger.

I want to preface this by saying that everyone is entitled to their feelings, and feelings are sometimes completely irrational. I am also aware that sometimes our feelings are driven by incomplete thoughts, and have a tendency to overwhelm us and those around us before we can process them. In saying that, I have seen a lot of conflicting emotions and reactions to the reveal that Misha Collins has a "serious" girlfriend (and a large cock apparently, but that is a whole other thing), and I know I shouldn't be surprised by it, but part of me is.

There was a conversation in my discord server over the complicated feelings people have about this news. As a cockles-friendly space this was to be expected, as any new development in the lives of either half of JenMish often spurs these kinds of conversations, but as it started to get emotional I was thanked for bringing some perspective. I hope that I can help anyone who also needs a different way of viewing this situation by making this post, while also helping myself to organise my own chaotic and complicated thoughts.

As I understand it, during the It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time event at this weekend's Burbank convention, Misha told a fun anecdote about gift-giving with his new girlfriend and her daughter, wherein Misha got some things delivered to said girlfriend directly from Amazon, and girlfriend wrapped them for the daughter including what she thought was a microphone but was actually another similarly shaped item not intended for children at all. He continued to say that this "microphone" was for his girlfriend so she wouldn't need to go searching elsewhere for intimacy, as they are currently living in separate states. Now, I was not at the event, and the lack of recordings (recording was strictly prohibited, so if you've got one shame on you, I don't want to know about it!) means that everything I will ever know about this story and the way it was told to the small audience who were lucky enough to be able to attend this event comes as a form of the Telephone game, and therefore lacks a whole lot of body language, tone and context. We, as a fandom, have been severely burnt by this kind of missing nuance before - think DenverCon'21 - and it's these kinds of kneejerk reactions that have the potential to spiral out of control and limit the things we get told at future events - think bishagate.

Think for a second about your personal perception of Misha Collins. He's chaotic, he can be a little self-deprecating or self-effacing, he likes to turn serious anecdotes into jokes. He is also a passionate and caring man, who has a lot of respect and appreciation for his fans. Think about the way he tells anecdotes at standard con panels - it's often a bit tongue-in-cheek, a bit sarcastic, a bit exaggerated - so why would his behaviour at this event, which was specifically set up for Misha to tell stories he wouldn't normally have the space to do in a convention setting, be any different?

I am going to go through my thoughts on some of the things I have seen mentioned about what this all means…

First off, the elephant in the room, what does this mean for Cockles? To me, absolutely nothing. Whatever Jensen and Misha have going on completely transcends a standard sexual and/or romantic relationship. Misha was in his relationship with Vicki for the majority of his life, including when he met Jensen, and we all know she literally wrote a book on polyamory; his perception of relationships is literally shaped and moulded by this, and it's not something he's going to just switch off. Danneel has been a permanent fixture in the cockles dynamic this entire time as well. The JenMish panel at Burbank this weekend will hopefully alleviate any of the doubt anyone is having here, and give us some knowledge that regardless of how Misha defines his relationship status, things will continue in the same chaotic, loving and ridiculous nature we've become accustomed to.

Which segues nicely into the implication that the vibrator was purchased so she wouldn't stray, and therefore their relationship is monogamous. See above thoughts about tongue-in-cheek, exaggerated and self-effacing - when I imagine him telling this story, I see that cheeky, gummy grin going the whole time. Without the nuance of watching this unfold, I think we are all safest to assume that this was a joke, not a firm declaration that he has left his polyamorous attitudes behind.

On thoughts of him "moving on too soon" from his marriage and subsequent divorce, this is where my own feelings get complicated as well, but also where we need to remember that the key feature of a parasocial relationship is that we only see and know what he wants us to. We don't actually know what the trigger for that dissolution was, so in terms of the actual calendar timing it might seem soon, but emotional development and change doesn't run on a standard calendar. We don't know how long the process was before the decision was made to separate. I am currently working through a messy separation, and while I can pinpoint the decision to somewhere in the past 6-12 months, my marriage has realistically been dead for 3+ years, and we're a (supposedly) monogamous couple. As a poly couple, I can imagine that Misha and Vicki worked through every alternative option possible before landing on the decision to formally separate, and had probably well and truly been through the mourning period before it was even all over. Adult relationships are complex at the best of times, and no one ever truly knows what is happening in them except the people involved. I also think that as a man who is nearing 50 and just come out of very long term relationship, that he doesn't actually know how to be "alone", nor does he want to…

Lastly, for some of us, this is someone important in our lives who has found happiness in another person when perhaps we don't have that for ourselves. When those feelings hit, they can be extremely disheartening, and I want to send all my loving thoughts to anyone who falls into this category. It's difficult when the envy turns your stomach in knots and then your thoughts spiral into all the things wrong that mean that no matter how much you want to you can't just be happy for someone. Love and life are complicated, human beings are complicated, society is complicated. There is this hugely widespread and toxic mentality that we are all raised on that says we are halves of something that is destined to find our other half in order to feel whole, and it's utter bullshit. We shouldn't need one singular significant other to feel complete, and sometimes we get so determined to find that someone that we end up sacrificing ourselves to make them fit. (see also; Daniel Sloss' thoughts on this subject in his stand-up special Jigsaw)

There are many different kinds of love, many different kinds of relationships, and many different kinds of people. If anyone proves that to us, it's Misha Collins. He is walking evidence that human life is chaotic and unpredictable and indeterminate and we can make our own fucking rules. I hope that we can collectively be respectful of him, no matter what (or who) he chooses, and feel grateful for everything he trusts us enough to share.

[eisforeidolon]

Hellers repeatedly and consistently prove they don't care about representation, they care about trying to force a single specific ship they personally fantasize about to be acted out onscreen.

Take this bullshit [X], for the latest example. Jared's regular, ongoing support of Out Youth is totes suspect because he can't possibly care about and understand LGBT+ causes if he doesn't tell them what they want to hear about D/C!

It's not about whether or not he supports real life LGBT+ organizations - because he obviously does. It's not about whether or not he supports individual real life LGBT+ people, like fans who share their stories with him - because he obviously does. It's not even about whether or not he supports representation in media, as they're trying to pretend is the thing they care about, because he's always talked positively about Charlie and Walker & W:I both have good representation - so he obviously fucking does.

But no, no, no, none of that matters! He told them at Denvercon their single specific ship wasn't an undeniable truth of the universe so he's Forever An Evil Homophobe until he takes it back. Them still griping about what Jared said (and ONLY what Jared said) at that con has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with him not being one half of their ship who they need to keep sucking up to in the hopes they'll be validated in a reboot, no sir! They're totally just concerned that he's not really a genuine ally!

Nevermind that very same weekend even fucking Misha said he didn't want there to be a definitive single interpretation of that scene. Nope, there's totally nothing remotely questionable about all the times Misha's changed his story about that scene, outright lied to them about the show, made important LGBT+ causes entirely about himself or that ship, or how he only does charity through organizations he has a personal stake in! He's a great ally, 100% genuine and unproblematic, no notes!

If they legitimately gave a single solitary fuck about LGBT+ causes and what makes someone a good ally, they wouldn't count "does this person tell me my fantasies about two specific tv characters boning are undeniably canon" as trumping literally everything else. So actually they prove over and over and over again their complaints are just entitled whining wearing a conspicuously fake progressive hat.

[aturnoftheearth]

And me i’ll never forget being told to kill myself for going to a supernatural convention freshly 20 and excited to spend a weekend talking about destiel with my friends. It’s like there were demons under my bed waiting for me to get home so they could fucking get me. The destiel therapy appointment became real as fuck

LITERALLY do you remember. us telling everyone after denvercon that the tickets were nonrefundable and we were gonna make the best of it by meeting our beloved friends and spending the weekend with them and seeing if we could infiltrate the impenetrable wall of gay cas silencing. and everyone said “yes do it!!” and we did and we spent the weekend posting and everyone was supportive and having a good time. and then we got home and were immediately told to apologize for going or kill ourselves. and this never happened to anyone else going to cons before or after.

[destielgaysex]

Why don’t you like mr ackles?

does anyone recall denvercon or is it just me

[angelsdean]

I saw your tag to a post about jp's bullshit answer at denvercon 2021. What happened there? What question were asked?

basically someone asked jensen: when did dean know cas loved him? and jensen said, for him he played it as dean didn't know until the end, and he talked about his interpretation (which he's talked about before) which is that dean has always seen angels as these higher beings and never would've thought them capable of love like that (which i mean. IS a headcanon that is pretty prevalent in the fandom and you see it in fics a lot where pre-getting together dean thinks cas could never love him like that bc he's an angel etc etc).

Anyways then J*red derailed and interrupted jensen (on a question that wasn't even about him or his character !!!) to joke that cas is "junkless" and then rambled on and on word-vomiting abt how spn isn't about romantic love or sexuality and basically invalidating cas's confession and saying it was not a romantic declaration of love, it was open to interpretation, etc etc. And then jensen was left to try to do damage control of all *that* in the moment and so he said cas's declaration went beyond the romantic because he's an angel and his love for dean would be more, and that there weren't really words to describe it, like it was more than just romantic. which TO ME, does not read as negating that it IS romantic but is instead saying that cas's love for dean encompasses the romantic and more. He was basically saying cas's love for dean is almost like worship bc he's an angel, and it's more complex than humans could understand, and well, that's another thing i have seen said in the fandom time and time again. Cas's love for dean IS vast and complicated and all-encompassing.

However, everyone was quick to lump jensen's response in with j*red's and say they were both negating the confession and saying it wasn't romantic, instead of what it really was which was jensen trying to fix what j*red said on the spot. And yea it wasn't a perfect response, he probably could've worded things better, but it wasn't like he had time to formulate a good response. He wasn't expecting any of this because the question wasn't even for j*red. There was no reason for j*red to speak. Also this was a Creation Con J///2 panel, so you can imagine which fans made up the majority of that audience and just what the atmosphere must've been like. Jensen also stormed off the stage after this and his body language toward j*red at the end of this panel (and really that whole con) was super closed off and hostile. This was like the first in person con since the pandemic too (and after the prequel announcement) so the j2 fallout theories were HIGH and some ppl also thought j*red was being an ass during that question on purpose.

[svenja-s-s-w]

Oh my-... I missed them so much! 🥺

It's so good to see them (together) again. After this long hiatus it's convention time again ❤

Smiling wide and with a rapidly beating heart I will go to sleep now. I wasn't at #denvercon but thanks to all of these kind people it feels like I was there.

The panels were great (minus a few things which seemed not to be coordinated that good) and I had a wonderful time watching them. 🤗

I'll be at three conventions next year and I really can't wait anymore. I want to see them in real life. 🙈 Fiumicino 🇮🇹 and Dusseldorf 🇩🇪 - since May 2020 we've been waiting...

[📸 NOT MINE!

OWNERS ARE TAGGED, CREDIT TO THEM. 💙]

[repost. originally posted on my Instagram in October 2021]

[heller-castiel]

hi. im mad at jared from 2021 denvercon again

[fandom-hoarder]

DenverCon 2018, when riffing about crossover shows

people ripping their hair out trying to prove that d*stiel is requited when we should be talking about the possibility of one sided wincest….sam yearns for a normal life & safety meanwhile dean gets off to the thought of his little brother in a dress

[aborddelimpala]

Oh come on Jackles ! 😜🤣

#SPNDEN 2022 | Main Panel

[inacatastrophicmind]

[the-rollerchloster]

You do know those that say bitchy things about Jensen, making fun of him or whatever for how much he cares about Dean, are often equally horrible about Misha at times, right?? Just because they sometimes may have a Cas icon or a Cas-related username doesn’t mean they’re Misha fans. There are a lot of Tumblr users who seem to think it’s fun/funny to be assholes about both of JenMish as people/actors

Oh, don't you worry nonnie, I am acutely aware of the kind of hellers you are talking about here. I erased most of them from my dash way back in late 2021 after that shit show that was DenverCon.

The people I am talking about are a select subset of hellers that claim to love Misha and Jensen, but their behaviour tells a different story. The kind of people who will praise Misha for everything he has done to support destiel, but can't believe for a millisecond that Jensen is on our side.

If I talked about Misha the way some of those hellers talked about Jensen, there'd be pitchforks. And yet, after every moment of support we get from Jensen, there's some naysayer (often multiple) doubting his intentions or dragging up things he's done in the past.

Jensen's not perfect, because he's human and no human is perfect. But that means Misha isn't perfect either, and as much as I love him, I'm just tired of him being the gold-tier in heller representation.

[katoska]

What the fuck brought this response on? Did you misread me? Did this ask stay in your askbox for... I don't even remember? could be a year now (when was DenverCon?)... with you rereading it and your brain warping its meaning ever further until you gave this rude af response? Where did I say that bisexual male characters can't date women? I said that Dean's feelings about Jo were allowed to fluctuate (from checking her out to seeing her as a little sister to offering last-night-on-earth sex anyway) with no one blinking an eye, but as soon as he calls a male(-vesseled) character a "brother", we are supposed to stick with that as solid proof of how Dean will forever feel about Cas far as some parts of fandom are concerned.

Someone on twitter just brought up the point - among some other bad points - that Jo got "friend-zoned" by Dean, too, so destiel shippers should just shut up about our "ship not going canon being about homophobia". And on re-reading that tweet (too late to answer now), I realised: Yeah, she did get friend-zoned, too, for a bit. But that's bc the writers decided Dean would show no interest DESPITE knowing about her feelings, rather than bc he assumed there were none. He saw her as a little sister. FOR A BIT. And then he checked out her butt and gave her an (acknowledged as such!) last night on Earth speech. And later kissed her as she lay dying. So that tweeter kinda made the point for me that m/f ships get a very different treatment to m/m ones.

No you dumb fuck. Jo got sister zoned or presented as a love interest depending on the writer bc spn was written by humans with their own fallible agendas. Kripke didn't want female characters, the network did. This is also why he blew up the Roadhouse and didn't check in with Ellen and Jo for an entire season. If the story was written with the idea that women can be interesting characters too, Jo would have been their half sister, and that's largely how the show treated her. But, and I know this is a hard concept to follow, a character being bisexual doesn't mean they wouldn't date women. It's not a competition. If you don't like my content unfollow, we'll both be happier for it.

[eisforeidolon]

Okay, today is the kind of day where I really can't just scroll past something like this nonsense without comment [X]. To paraphrase: D/C fans totes loved Jared and really wanted to support Walker but just couldn't because the finale was such a betrayal :( :( :(. We're not hateful for the sake of being bitter, it's just so sad we had to turn on Jared because [implied batshit crazy]! FFS.

First, as if we don't remember how many fucking times hellers attacked Jared over utter bullshit long before the finale. Not only have they always been hateful little shits, they've always lied through their teeth about it. Some post from three years ago doing the same old same old, "Oh we're totally the GOOD side of fandom who never hate anybody, lookit our halos!" song and dance doesn't mean jack shit.

Second, what the fuck do they think being bitter means? "The tv show I was watching refused to cater to me personally by throwing away the core premise and genre of the show, which is totally unfaiiiiir - despite common sense and me being told repeatedly they wouldn't ever do so. Therefore I'm going to quote unquote punish the network and the stars by not watching any of their other shows! So there!" Like ... what? It's absurdly bitter - not to mention childish. Which doesn't even get into the giant black hole of logic that is blaming the actors for the writing which was done by the, y'know, writers.

But let's pretend for a moment it's not inherently bitter (as well as fucking ridiculous) to be butthurt a tv show didn't end in bad OOC fanfic out of nowhere and to blame the actors for it. They still prove it's nothing more than sour grapes bitter shipwar bullshit by ONLY singling out Jared and Walker. If they were really actually trying to avoid supporting the CW and ALL those involved in the finale rightfully disappointing their delusional asses? Misha conspired a year in advance to queerbait them with Castiel's death scene, pitched only as one-sided and with him knowing Castiel wouldn't be in the final two episodes. Jensen knew the ending was centering on the brothers as early as Jared did when they talked with the writers and played just at least as much of a part in adding little touches to make the finale as brother-centric as it was, including removing dialogue mentions of Castiel. Jensen also nodded along with Jared's Denvercon answer about how Castiel's death speech wasn't inherently romantic and added his own concurring opinion. And yet somehow, just by pure coincidence, really, I'm sure! It's only Walker and Jared they decided to boycott - while most of them wandered around proclaiming how happy they were to tune in to TW and GK on the supposedly oh-so-evil CW. But they totes love Jared, really! 🙄 They just can't help personally blaming just him for the finale because if there is a reboot he isn't half their shitty ship there was, like, totally an Easter egg mentioning going to Texas or whatever! Yeah! The finale is totally Walker propaganda!!! So they just couldn't watch only that CW show, though they really really wanted to! 😢

This transparent bullshit was at least funnier when it had hypnotiddies in it.