#i have never been so badly queerbaited by anything in my life and i don't think it's even queerbait

[gaylord-nelson]

I would pay every dollar and cent that I have to be locked in a room with Robin Hobb for an hour long conversation about gender and sexuality because I cannot take this anymore

[thehollowprince]

1.Hey just want to let you know that I am the first anon who asked about Jensen Ackles and Tyler Posey - I don't know which teen wolf anon you assumed I was, but that was the first time I send you an ask. I am a TP fan and check your blog for TP stuff and was surprised to see you reblogging jokes about Ackles being homophobic - since I see him facing the same issues that Posey did - a toxic fandom that bullies actors just because they don't subscribe to wanting two hot white men to get together.

2. Same anon. I don't think we should be throwing around words like homophobia lightly or based on rumors about how Ackles made a showrunner change the character based on his preferences etc. Ackles maybe homophobic - we don't know for sure. All I know is that from my experience, the Destiel fandom is as toxic as the Sterek fandom. Sure, Ackles shares part of the blame as he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars off these fans at the various cons - ( contd. in part 3)

3. But that does not mean that actors or their family should be subject to cyber bullying and online hate or that the showrunners should pander to this toxic fanbase. Scott would have been and was sidelined to pander to and queerbait Sterek fans and he was called homophobic when he pointed out how nonsensical the ship was. Destiel is the same and I don't mind Ackles not giving two shits about acting out a badly written scene pushed in to appease a toxic fanbase. Just my two cents.

Okay, first off, I want to say the only anon I've ever gotten that used Tyler Posey and "double-standards" in the same sentence has been the Asshole Anon I tagged. And given the fact that this anon was in my inbox within an hour of posting that ask, it stands to reason that my paranoia is well founded. This would not be the first time they've tried to trick anyone into a "Gotcha!" moment, and I was the next on the rotation of people they harass.

That being said and out of the way, let's get into this.

Starting off, you're right. Claims of homophobia shouldn't be a joke. Homophobia is a very real thing that affects many people around the world. And given the shipping fandoms that habe arisen in the past decade, along with thr use of social media by celebrities, it allows these fans to harass and belittle them from the comfort of their homes, no matter where said celebrity is. I would never make jokes regarding how fans treat the loved ones of their favorite celebrities, because I find it abhorrent. We saw something similar to his happen with the Star Wars fandom, particularly the R*ylos, when they doxxed and harassed Adam Driver's wife in the hopes that he and Daisy Ridley would get together, thus fulfilling the fantasy they have about their ship.

I don't keep up with the actors of Supernatural because I don't watch it anymore, but I imagine that's the case with Jensen's wife. Fans harassing her because she married him and they've based their entire personality and fandom experience around a ship between two fictional characters and the actor's personal life interferes with that fantasy. The fans that are harassing Jensen and his family aren't doing it out of any sense of morality in their efforts to fight homophobia, but because they want to see Dean and Cas together, and can't (or won't) accept that they're fictional characters played by two actors that have their own private lives.

Something similar happened with the Sherlock fandom, when they decided to cancel Martin Freeman and his wife because they asked fans to stop sending them NSFW fanart or J*hnl*ck, especially when they were with their children. I'll admit I'm a little fuzzy on that one, because I've never watched BBC Sherlock, but I did follow a few blogs that did so I remember the discourse. This all just feeds into the idea that shipping fandoms "own" the actors that play their favorite characters and has made for quite a toxic environment on most social media.

If the D*stiel fandom is anything like the St*r*k fandom or the J*hnl*ck fandom , than I applaud Jensen for standing his ground in the face of what I'm sure is countless inappropriate fics and art that are constantly thrown at him.

Now, there are a few differences between how Jensen is being accused of being homophobic and how Tyler was accused of being homophobic. The first major difference is something you said in this ask. They're jokes. Keeping in mind that, yes, I did say we shouldn't joke about homophobia, all the "discourse" around D*stiel has been jokes due to a variety of reasons. From how uncomfortable Jensen looked in that scene (leading some to think they were filmed separately and not told how the other was reacting) to the fact that it was happening during election week before the election was called. The fact that the rumors that Putin was stepping down came out at the same time and the whole situation took on this hysterical, otherworldly quality, like this was a collective fever dream we couldn't wake up from. The jokes came about, breaking the tension that had consumed Tumblr and uniting a large number of people in the absurdity of everything.

There's also the fact that the jokes about Jensen being homophobic were just that - jokes! I'll admit that I haven't gone looking, but I haven't seen anyone calling for Jensen to be cancelled or for his career to be derailed or his life to be ruined because of that scene. No, I've seen countless jokes about how Dean looked constipated or memes of random images found on people's phones used to "recreate" that scene. The fact that Jensen apparently wrote into his contract that his character in The Boys wasn't to have a gay sex scene just added to the satirical nature of everything.

Now let's compare that to Tyler Posey. When asked about a crack ship (that had nothing to do with his character) for the umpteenth time, he said that, if that's what fans were watching for, they're probably watching for the wrong reasons. It never condemned the ship or mocked its fans, he simply said that they were watching for the wrong reasons. And given how this interview took place after filming was done for that season, that could be interpreted as him saving people from wasting their time on something that wasn't going to happen. Personally, I just think he was fed up and frustrated about being asked about a crack ship that had nothing to do with him.

And for that one simple sentence, he was (and still is) deluged with hate. He received death threats and threats against his mother while she was battling cancer, all because he said something that wasn't a glowing appraisal of a ship that the fandom made up. To this day, there are people hell bent on proving how Scott was the true villain of the Teen Wolf series, and how Tyler Posey is just an awful human being.

Did any of those things happen to Jensen? No.

Would those things have probably happened to Jared if he'd said something negative about D*stiel? Probably.

Would the Teen Wolf fandom have acted the way it did if it had been Hoechlin or O'Brien who shot down St*r*k? Definitely not. We know that because they both did say something against St*r*k and the fandom at large likes to pretend that it never happened.

So, as we can see, there is a very clear difference between how Jensen was treated and how Tyler was treated. Could racism play a part in that treatment? Most likely, though, many would never admit to that. But, at the end of the day, its important to look at the differences between these two actors and how they were treated by their respective fandoms for what they said in regards to ships that fans have based their entire fandom experience around.

[elizabethrobertajones]

You don't have to answer this, but anons like that person are exactly why what SPN is doing is so toxic. It's been 13 years - TFW are real people to many by now. Dishonest storytelling and queerbaiting do hurt, and are damaging. You have a right to watch the show and enjoy it, but I wonder if at some point you and the other meta writers will stop defending it - once it's over and nothing textual has happened, will it still be okay bc some beer label was tied to Destiel in the last scene? FFS.

If you think Destiel is only real because of beer labels you’re understanding meta writers all wrong. ESPECIALLY about “defending” Destiel. We CARE about it and we WRITE about it. I will “defend” Destiel in the sense that people defend their thesis (actually, wait I never had to do that because I only have a BA - I assume whoever you defend it to doesn’t lob anon complaints at you the entire time while you stand there helplessly gesturing where in your essay you answered their question already if they just read it properly :P) - I will explain what I see and why and how it all works and all because people are apparently interested in knowing this sort of thing?

If meta writers really upset you that much then I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding about the entire point of it. When I go to write about something in the show I preface zillions of my comments with “I love” as a starting point and then start to explain deeper why I love some aspect of the show. Search my blog and you’ll get a billion results of me saying i love this i love that i love all of this. It’s not me being twee. It’s my rationale for why I am discussing something. 

What I am discussing is the story the way I see it and the way I enjoy it. 

Look, I got into meta because of Metatron, of Robbie Thompson, of the SUGGESTION that the subtextual level of the show had more to say than the surface layer. That it wasn’t a trashy genre show but there was a real intent. I mean maybe it was just asking us to realise that there’s so much good work going on in the show. It helps that 9x18 is one of the most fantastically layered episodes and structurally really interesting and contains foreshadowing and all sorts of goodies. I like the goodies, I am a bit of a nerd with a Literature degree who was on medical leave from life, so why not dig into the show and find what else it’s saying beyond the surface? And that’s *everything*. Sam and Dean and Cas’s lives and journeys. Parallels and side characters and metaphors and allusions and pop culture and settings and scenery and the amazing motels. The way old seasons come back around with new meanings. The whole WORLD of these characters.

I love this show.

And I see Destiel as part of its story, not as A Ship or a random concept that you can extrapolate if the sun is in the right part of the sky and you’re standing on the side side of the show squinting at it. Everything Dean and Cas do together and often away from each other is part of a massive narrative where their point of reference is the other and that narrative is one of the most compelling things about the show. The thing I don’t just love but utterly adore. It’s a story beyond stories and boundaries and it’s spilled out of the show and spilled out of Cas’s original 5 appearances or whatever, and it’s spilled into the fandom and our lives and every love song on the radio or romantic trope you see in a corny movie. It’s ridiculous and huge and it’s just THERE in the story. It doesn’t matter if some people don’t believe in it. In a literary, justice-aside way it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t ~go canon~ in some way that satisfies 99% of people that it actually happened because it doesn’t become real in that instance.

(Of course it fucking matters that it should go canon in the “what is fair and right and this is going to be horrible if it doesn’t and the show is going to have a reckoning for that. Of course it is. I’m not thinking about that right now because it’s not currently needed. The show’s still going. I can roll up my sleeves but why the fuck would I throw punches right now? The show is still airing so they still have a chance. A ticking timebomb chance but I don’t function in negativity. I don’t wait for it to go wrong or them to fuck it up. I don’t sit here EXPECTING it not to go canon because I’m enjoying myself NOW.)

The way you look at what I’m doing is so utterly sad and miserable to me. I can’t imagine how you feel and it hurts me that something has hurt you this badly that you can’t even deal with other people enjoying something you used to love, that you are just looking at us waiting for it to blow up in our faces, thinking that us enjoying something and sharing the things we find fun, the things we love, is doing some toxic harm. It breaks my heart. Fandom is toxic but not because of the people who are still writing love letters to the show and caught up in the fun part of being a fan, the part where you want to talk about the show and enjoy its characters and stories and ideas all day. Fandom is toxic because some people have stopped loving it and created this horrible miasma of looming disappointment, made other people wait for it. Spread it that meta writers are sitting on a wobbling throne on a very narrow crumbling pedestal that’s going to collapse.

Last time I got a gloomy anon, the other week, I said something like that it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t go canon in the literary analysis sense, in the sense that Destiel was real, and that to me this blog is building the enormous, to me sprawling mountainous foundation I sit on of what is IN the show, what I love about it, what to me can never ever ever ever be taken away, not by any future plot twist or crappy endgame. My interpretation is my own and it’s vast and it fills every nook and cranny of the show. I have meta’d every nook and cranny of the show. I have wrung every freakin morsel of Destiel out of it from season 1 right through to present moment and stowed every last drop on this blog, proudly labelled and beamed at as I set them into place, and then I wander those shelves happily enjoying my vast collection of Things That Happened On The Show, from the smallest beer label lol to the vastest narrative meaning. 

In this day and age we NEED to learn to be happy and enjoy the small things, the things that bring us comfort, the things that might get us through a day. We can’t when people spread evil toxic miasma of negativity through the fandom. 

So I am going to continue posting Destiel and writing ‘i love this’ when I talk about it and other people can either learn to love it or swallow the poison that makes them hate the thing that used to bring them comfort. Because I love the show and I don’t think that has anything to do with Destiel or with meta or whatever. The meta is me explaining WHY I love a thing. It is not desperately sitting on my knees scrabbling around in the mud looking for a single beer label floating by. The beer labels are a bonus on an excellent story. 

And this is not a defence. This is an explanation. Like everything else. Take it as you will or stop sending negative poison to people. I’m uncomfortably well-adjusted but I’m just me and I hate the idea of you hurting someone else with this garbage.