#i see posts about 2013 spn fans and i’m like that’s great! i was nine :)

[caswlw]

as someone who straight up didn’t acknowledge the actors or the goings on of the bts and panels and everything until this year bc of the filming halt i can’t help but be happy i did

like i didn’t start watching spn until s12 was airing (to be fair. i was like 13 so) and i didn’t even have a tumblr i just lurked two different spn blogs (shoutout to @tinkdw and @bluestar86 lol) after every episode came out until i started getting sucked into spn tumblr when s15 began airing and it just breaks my heart to hear all of u who did watch the creators and everyone working on the show absolutely bash [redacted] for years like,, the vindication now has to be like whiplash knowing that so many of the writers and actors on the show actively liked ykw and the loudest voices were just so yikes about it

[abso-freaking-lutly]

I see Supernatural bashing on tumblr all the time, and I just wanted to get my thoughts down on it. Supernatural, for me at least, was not ruined by the writing of the show, but by the fandom. Supernatural was my first experience in online fandom. Everything else was just chatting with my friends and texting each other fic recs. And god did the fandom make me hate the show. People decided the show had to be F-ing AP lit class instead of just enjoying it like a person. Everyone had to nitpick every thing calling every character problematic. Nobody could separate their ships from canon (and trust me, I’m an avid stucky shipper. I know what it is like to see a ship that isn’t gonna happen. But I also know that it isn’t gonna happen and I haven’t harassed the writers and actors by calling them homophobes a million times a day). I was told both in person and online that I was a bad person because I liked Sam better than I liked Dean. Sorry I relate to one character more than the other, its an opinion we are allowed to have different ones.

I stopped watching Supernatural for lack of time more than anything else. I really didn’t like the show at this point, but I wanted to see it to the end because I had invested that much time into it. I was a college freshman and I stopped watching after season 11 because I didn’t have the time to watch a show on Tuesdays and I had no way to DVR it or legally stream it, and I didn’t care enough to look for illegal streams. I didn’t want spoilers (because at the time I had plans to binge the season on netflix — which was a bust because they get posted in october, during school) so I ended up unfollowing every supernatural blog that I followed on tumblr, and I unfollowed most of the cast on twitter too (At this point I think I just follow Misha?). And it was freeing. There was maybe a 10th of the stressful discourse on my dash. I had time to look into other fandoms, Marvel, The Flash, Shadowhunters, Brooklyn Nine Nine. And those fandoms were/are fun to be in, it was people actually enjoying the show and doing an analysis on positive things they noticed, instead of bashing it and the people who just enjoyed it because it was fun. (I didn’t like Supernatural because it was groundbreaking i liked it because I have a thing for tall bad boys, classic rock, and magic. But in that fandom you weren’t allowed to like things for shallow reasons.) Discourse in these other fandoms didn’t end with people telling each other to kill themselves, and even after F-ing Civil War the Steve v Tony discourse usually ended with my friends and I agreeing to disagree then deciding to re watch Winter Soldier or Iron Man 3.

I realized the Supernatural fandom was toxic as hell, more so than a lot of other rabid/cult fan bases. (and yeah every fan base has their terrible people and discourse junkies who make things un-fun. I’ve blocked and unfollowed a ton of other fandom blogs. but with SPN that was nearly everybody) And now its really cool to hate Supernatural, just like it was cool to hate OneDirection 7 years ago. So no matter what you lose.

This past spring, 2 seasons after I stopped watching Supernatural , I caught an episode from their leviathan arc (An arc that I genuinely remember disliking) while I was at the gym, and I absolutely loved it. It was funny and action packed. Everybody was really good looking and for once since joining tumblr in 2013 the episode wasn’t marred by a discourse about how Sam ruined everything or about how the leviathans were stupid, or how destiel should be canon and how the writers were homophobic for not writing it that way (Sorry not sorry, but I never got destiel).

I’m too far behind to catch up right now, so I’ll probably end up waiting for the show to end then rewatching the whole thing, and hopefully by the time that happens I’ll be off of tumblr too. I guess what I really want to say in this is, don’t let the fandom ruin a show for you. Casually liking things is about 1000% more fun than being deep in a fan base. Just let yourself enjoy things and don’t act like it has to be fully analyzed. Deeper understanding of the media can be great. It can lead to things like the iconic head canon that Steve Rogers figured out that he was in the future not because of the game on the radio but because of how the agent was dressed. You can look deeper but you shouldn’t feel like you have to do work to enjoy a show.