#how do people compare w*ncest to destiel?

[fandom-eater67]

Just had my first w*ncest post sighting on this app. What the actual fuck

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

now that it’s all over, i gotta say how incredible and bitterly hilarious it is that not even greed is stronger than homophobia.

like, people love misha collins. people love castiel. when they killed cas off in s7, viewership dropped by thirty percent and they had to scramble to rewrite him back into the show - and he’s only gotten more popular since then. at spn conventions, they have two costume competitions - one for castiel cosplayers, and one for everyone else. there are only a fraction of sam and dean costumes compared to cas costumes. misha is, as far as i know, the only cast member to do photo ops as his character - he puts on the suit and coat and takes pictures with fans while behaving like cas. people love it.

and people love destiel. it’s one of the biggest ships on the fucking planet. it has 90k+ fics on ao3. you can find destiel merch just about anywhere. after 15x18, destiel trended online over the presidential election. 

a ton of people tuned into the finale just on the hope that cas/misha would return, that they’d been lied to when it was said 15x18 was his last episode. if they had teased a clip of cas coming back - forget that, if they had teased a clip of a kiss? millions of people would have tuned in to see it happen. people who’d never watched the show and never would have watched the finale would have watched. sure, they would have faced some blowback from the conservative fans, but that wouldn’t have mattered after the finale.

and if they had embraced cas and embraced destiel, they could have milked that cash cow for years. they could have marketed to the entire queer community, they could have patted themselves on the back and “proven” they were never queerbaiting at all. they could have grown the fandom instead of shrinking it. the money-making opportunities on cas and destiel are practically limitless.

instead, they fucked over not only cas fans and destiel fans, but dean fans and sam fans; i’m not in w*ncest and bronly circles, but i can’t imagine even they enjoyed this, considering sam just moved on with his life after dean died and they were separated for 50 years. people are utterly furious. there’s a real chance that this fandom is going to completely implode, game of thrones style, and nobody will want to go to cons or buy spn merch anymore. it could have been cool to like spn, now it’s more embarrassing than ever before.

and all that because some dudes out there were like, i hate the idea of two men kissing more than i love piles of money. that’s fucking wild.

[meatmandean]

Ugh saw some people on discord being like "bad apples on both sides" about destiel and w*ncest shippers and i just...how do people not get that's not the same thing?? Even if the behavior is the same (its not) one is inherently worse than the other. It's my biggest problem with the finale that by doing the death scene Like That these gross people essentially got the last word.

comparing a normal ship to an incest ship is so fucking stupid if anyone ever says that to you again just call them a moron

[orionsangel86]

Ah the sweet smell of statistics on a hot summer evening...

@dotthings shared the latest AO3 shipping stats with me on Twitter and I am fascinated (and not surprised) with the numbers presented, because they provide a truthful outlook on fandom trends and ship popularity that silences all screams from hateful factions. Basically AO3 is dishing out some truly delicious tea over there...

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19963579/chapters/47258239

Destiel of course is once again the most popular ship on AO3 with 79,650 fan works. It has 20k more fan works than the next most popular ship. Let that sink in. The even sweeter tea is that the next most popular SPN ship only has 26,287 fan works on AO3. Destiel has 53k more fan works than W*ncest.

Chapter two of the AO3 link presents us with the most popular ships of 2017-2019 which I find even more interesting. This is showing us active ships. How many fan works have been created for that ship over the past three years. In this list, Destiel is in third place. Again, let that sink in. This is a 14 year old fandom, and in the past three years alone Destiel fandom created 13,537 fan works. So still a very active very popular ship basically.

Comparing those figures to that of W*ncest - 3,493 fan works on A03 in the space of 3 years. This is actually far lower than even I would have expected, baring in mind how loudly that side of fandom likes to scream about how popular their ship is... I guess that’s what happens when you waste all your time attacking people/actors/writers etc on social media, and not spend it actually doing what you love...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So if you ever get some asshole on social media screaming at you that you are delusional for shipping Destiel, are a loud minority, and are told that incest is a popular and acceptable ship in Supernatural fandom, just link them to the actual facts to shut them up.

Also, the 2017-2019 stats indicate that whilst Destiel has only dropped 1 place, W*ncest dropped 30 places. From this I think we can conclude that the show in the past three years has kept Destiel shippers engaged but put off W*ncest shippers. This also gives a nice indicator for how fandom in general sees the source content at the moment. It probably helps that Destiel shippers tend to be a very active and encouraging bunch, with several writing bangs throughout the year and a general focus on encouraging content creation and nurturing new talent. I would consider this at least somewhat proof that no matter what haters say, Destiel fandom is a welcoming and encouraging place for fans to meet like minded people and it inspires us to share our work and our passions.

So I consider that another blatant lie crushed by the stats - Destiel fans are by FAR the least problematic of Supernatural fandom - When we are loud, it is because we are passionate and excitable. But we are not hateful, if we were really all that bad, we wouldn’t still be churning out new content at such high volumes because we’d be putting people off. 

Something to be proud of anyway guys. :)

Disclaimer: I am well aware that the purpose of these statistics is to draw attention to how M/M orientated fandom shipping is, and the huge lack of femslash and female character shipping that exists in fandom - however I personally consider this less about misogyny within fandom and more about misogyny within the film/TV industries where male characters get more focus, are better developed and whose male relationships have more emotional weight, compared to female characters who are perpetually forced into stereotypes or bland pretty Barbie dolls and don’t get deep and meaningful story lines or relationship arcs. This is a completely separate topic of conversation and not one I plan to get into right now, so please no one come at me with your lectures.

Also - I don’t give a damn if you ship W*ncest. Do what you do. This isn’t about shaming W*ncest shippers. What I care about is lies, and hateful bullying in fandom, and a constant false narrative being pushed by a few loud assholes that I have seen first hand. The manipulation of new fans by certain big accounts in fandom run by W*ncest shippers to encourage this notion that Destiel is a minority ship is laughable, but unfortunately new fans won’t realise they are being lied to until it is too late. Hence my sharing this and my sassy tone. Anyone trying to claim Destiel isn’t supported by a majority of SPN fans must actually be living in fairyland. We even have our own official T-Shirt now (technically, we have two). Get over it. 

[orionsangel86]

I love your blog, you are so cool! I'm very interested in your little experiment, have you gotten any answer yet? I tried to do that once, only two persons talked to me and both said the same (they just don't like misha) one of them spend 3 days trying to convince me to stop shipping destiel but it did't work.

Thanks! I have got quite a lot of responses now since its been a few days since I posted and I have basically not been on Tumblr since then. 

Some of the responses are... interesting... others are just... well, sweeping statements that I will never ever agree with no matter how often they are repeated. Some of the responses had me grimacing. Serious YIKES. I promised I wouldn’t argue against anyone’s opinions though and I don’t intend to.

I do understand people who are put off the ship by the fandom though. I am aware that there are certain Destiel shippers who are... um... passionate? To be polite. Especially since joining Twitter.

But having said that, having spent enough time browsing the standard Supernatural tags, and viewing responses on official SPN social media, I can say for absolute certain that Destiel shippers are NOT the most aggressive, hateful, forceful and bullying fans in this fandom. Oh no. That title belongs to the cereal club for now and forever. I have never been more horrified at the vitriol coming from that little group of W*ncest/J2 tinhats. I have NEVER and I mean NEVER in all my years in this fandom now, come across a single Destiel shipper that has come even remotely close to the disgusting behaviour displayed by that group of people. So anyone claiming that Destiel fans are the worst of SPN fandom? Oh boy, they clearly haven’t come across cereal club.

I can see why a non shipper would find lots of Destiel related comments on official SM annoying, but it is in no way comparable to the behaviour of other fans towards Destiel shippers IMO. Then again, I guess I’m biased. 

Quite a few people seem to repeat the false “facts” that Dean has stated he is straight, and that actors and writers have also all confirmed Dean’s supposed straightness and/or confirmed that Destiel isn’t happening. The standard arguments that we have seen time and time again and very clearly proven false now for years have cropped up as I expected, though at this point these arguments make me roll my eyes. 

What fascinates me the most are the ones who simply state they don’t see it. Never have, never will. Don’t see any chemistry or romantic connection between Dean and Cas at all and are baffled by those of us that do. Those are the people who I want to sit down with and go through each and every Destiel moment that has convinced me of the love story over the years and ask them to explain it from their point of view, because how the hell else am I meant to understand how we can both be watching the same scene and seeing two completely different things? It’s like that bloody dress from a few years back. Was it black and blue and white or gold? I saw it first as black and blue, but I spent hours just staring at it forcing my brain to see white and gold so I could at least understand half the bloody population. Eventually I managed to see it, and of course, the white and gold was a trick of the light. But I felt somewhat satisfied in knowing that half the people on the internet weren’t completely bonkers.

It’s an interesting experiment and I do like getting opposing viewpoints just so that I can validate my own. So far no one has been able to present me with an argument that is strong enough to make me waiver on my own opinion. I consider that a success.

[supernatural-24]

SO REAL

Just had my first w*ncest post sighting on this app. What the actual fuck