#i have harbored a great deal of Certified Autistic Affection for Castiel for like a decade

[gen-is-gone]

listen guys it’s 2 in the morning again bc i have no job again and i’ve got a podcast episode to record tomorrow and a job i don’t want to apply for this week and fuck, i’m about to fucking cry over fucking supernatural, and destiel. I found a speedrun of relevant dean/cas episodes about a week and a half ago and on a whim decided to sort of catch up before the last episode and. fuck. i’ve consumed like sixty episodes straight, jumping from place to place with next to no context. i have stayed up til five in the goddamn morning, twice, watching this show. i have watched more supernatural in the last 15 hours than i’d watched in its whole 15 years, and guys. FUCK.

Supernatural has been on the periphery of my fandom experience for as long as I’ve been in fandom. It premiered in the autumn of ‘05 and I discovered fanfiction.net in the summer of ‘06. I heard of it for the first time reading a crossover with Pirates of the Caribbean of all things later that year. I read multiple Criminal Minds crossovers where the FBI tracks the Winchesters on LiveJournal a few years later. I remember a fanartist I liked for Artemis Fowl writing long essays on Deviantart about her ambivalence towards Castiel, and her annoyance at wincest shippers jumping ship to dean/castiel (this was before the portmanteau shipname vogue). I remember spn from years before it hit tumblr and the floodgates opened wide, long before it became one of the three sacred pillars of fandom from ‘11 to ‘13. Fuck, I remember learning about a/b/o from an Inception kink meme that had to link to a Fanlore page for Supernatural to explain what the requester wanted.

I remember all of this from a fandom I was never really a part of, and I say this not to assert some sort of moral or intellectual superiority but just because at the time it never spoke to me. I’ve know plenty of people who adored spn, who wrote fic, made art, compiled the gifsets its fandom became legendary for, and having finally, finally, here at the end of all things actually watched it, (well, some small salient portion of it) I just wanna say:

Fuck, I am so proud of this fandom. You have done incredible, legendary things. You have made art, drawings, paintings, photoedits, gifsets, cosplay. You have written millions, billions of words of fanfiction and essays and passionate reactions. You have created infrastructure and culture and were an integral part of fandom’s migration from web 1.0 to 2.0, from the ‘journals to tumblr and twitter (for better and for worse). You created one of the first spontaneous crossover fandoms in history. You made history. You inspired paradigm-shifting debate about everything from misogyny in horror tropes to the pitfalls of parasocial relationships. You challenged what we could expect from creators in terms of representation and respect. You demanded better than queerbaiting and denial, and yet persisted in spite of it, for fifteen years.

Listen, I don’t know if this show deserves you, though I suspect it does not. And yes, this fandom, like all fandoms, has had a host of drama ranging from the silly to the horrific, and I won’t pretend it hasn’t. But every megafandom has those troubles; you genuinely were not somehow the worst fandom ever, (far from it) and this post is not about that. This is about how utterly, profoundly inspiring this fandom has been, in its fervor, in its dedication, in its absolute joy that fucking frankly, too many people have tried for too damn long to crush. Here’s to all of you, refusing to back down and bearing mocking and hate from the cringe culture crowd and the creators alike. Here’s to those who’ve been in this ride since the bush administration, and here’s to those who jumped on right here at the very end, like I did. I’m glad to have known this fandom, long before I knew this show.

I’m proud of you, and you all should be proud of yourselves. So no matter how this final episode goes down, no matter how exalting, joyful, and satisfying, or how bitterly disappointing, please, please. Be proud of yourselves. This fandom is a part of history, a seismic event, an indelible mark on the geologic record of fandom and the internet. You have done incredible things. You have inspired me, and I’ve barely seen Supernatural. Imagine, and remember, all the ways you’ve inspired each other. I’m glad to have lived and been in fandom during its reign.

(I’m actually tearing up a little as I write this, which could just be from allergies and sleep deprivation, but let’s be real, it’s not the allergies and sleep deprivation.)

Thank you, Supernatural fandom. Carry on.