#the wincest vs destiel nonsense

[peppermintquartz]

Looking on a ship war on a mainstream tv show and laughing at the nonsense being thrown out right now because I've been through the trenches, I've watched Buffy, SPN and Hannibal

[eisforeidolon]

MISHA IS SUPERNATURAL BIGGEST MISTAKE.

CASTIEL COULD HAVE BEEN AN INTERESTING CHARACTER, IF HE HAD BEEN PLAYED BY A TALENTED AND PROFESSIONAL ACTOR. ESPECIALLY PROFESSIONAL AND SERIOUS.

WE DON'T DESERVE MISHA'S LIES AND QUEERBAITING.

BUT I THINK THAT MISHA ONLY TALENTS ARE LYING TO PEOPLE AND QUEERBAITING HIS DESTIEL FANS FOR MONEY. THIS ARE THE ONLY THINGS HE KNOWS HOW TO DO.

DESTIEL ISN'T CANON. JENSEN SAID THAT SO MANY TIMES.

HE EVEN SAID THAT WHEN HE WAS ASKED ABOUT "THE CONFESSION 'S RESOLUTION".

HE SAID THAT THERE WAS NOTHING TO BE RESOLVED. BECAUSE EVEN IF THE "CONFESSION " WAS ROMANTIC, FOR DEAN NOTHING WOULD CHANGE.

DEAN ISN'T IN LOVE WITH CASTIEL. HE ADDRESSES CASTIEL AS DEAN 'S FRIEND AND ONE OF THE PEOPLE CLOSEST TO HIM. BUT THAT'S IT.

JENSEN NEVER ADDRESSES CASTIEL AS DEAN'S POTENTIAL LOVE INTEREST.

JENSEN (AND JARED) SAID MANY TIMES THAT SUPERNATURAL IS ABOUT SAM AND DEAN AND THEIR DEEP BOND AND UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.

15X20 IS THE PROOF OF THAT LOVE. WINCEST IS MORE CANON THAN DESTIEL WILL EVER BE.

I'M TALKING ABOUT PLATONIC LOVE OF COURSE.

I SHIP WINCEST BUT UNLIKE THE HELLERS I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT IS CANON AND WHAT IS JUST A FANTASY.

15x20 SHOWS TO THE VIEWER THE ESSENCE OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SAM AND DEAN.

SPOILER FOR 15X20.

SPOILER FOR 15X20

SPOLER FOR 15X20

DEAN DIES, BUT EVEN IN HIS LAST MOMENTS HE COMMITS HIMSELF TO ONLY LOVE SAM. HE SAYS HE LOVES HIM AND THAT IT'S ALWAYS BEEN THEM TOGETHER AGAINST THE WORLD.

" IT'ALWAYS BEEN YOU... AND ME". THAT'S WHAT DEAN SAYS.

THE PAUSE IN THAT PHRASE, THE WAY THEY EMBRACE, THE FOREHEAD TOUCH. EVERYTHING IN THE SCENE IS POINTING TO WHO IS WATCHING THAT DEAN GREATEST LOVE IS SAM.

THIS IS A CONFESSION. PLATONIC AND SO BEAUTIFUL. BETTER THAN ANY OTHER "ROMANTIC" CONFESSION THAT I EVER SEEN OR I EVER HEARD.

END SPOILER FOR 15X20.

OF COUSE DEAN IS ALSO SAM GREATEST LOVE, BUT I WANTED TO GIVE MY ATTENTION TO DEAN 'S BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS SAM VS DEAN BEHAVIOUR TOWARD CASTIEL IN THEIR LAST SCENE TOGETHER. THERE IS NO COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO.

WE ALL KNOW THAT SUPERNATURAL WAS ALWAYS ABOUT SAM AND DEAN AND THAT A LOVE STORY CAN BE ABOUT TWO BROTHER WHO SAVED EACH OTHER AND FOUGHT MONSTERS, EVIL CREATURES, DEMONS, ANGELS, THE DEVIL AND GOD FOR STAYING WITH EACH OTHER.

OF COURSE WE CANNOT SAY SAM AND DEAN WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT JARED AND JENSEN. THEIR ACTING, THEIR CHEMISTRY INSIDE THE SHOW AND OUTSIDE TOO, THEIR KINDNESS, IS WHAT MAKES SUPERNATURAL A SHOW THAT CHANGED MY LIFE.

I ALWAYS GET EMOTIONAL ABOUT THIS SHOW. THAT'S WHY I CAN'T STAND PEOPLE LIKE MISHA WHO ALWAYS SAYS SHIT ABOUT THE SHOW AND THE ACTORS ( JARED AND JENSEN)

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING TO MY RANT, SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH, IT ISN'T MY FIRST LANGUAGE, AND I HOPE THAT I DIDN'T ANNOY YOU OR BOTHERED YOU.

MAY LOVE AND KINDNESS ALWAYS FIND YOU.

I have to agree. Also, your English is fine and I definitely understand the need to rant about all this nonsense sometimes, that's why I've got this blog! <3

I do actually feel like Misha was a perfectly serviceable actor way back at the beginning. I even get why they decided to keep him around when he proved popular with the fandom. It was indeed proven a mistake in so, so many ways as time went on, though.

Yeah, first and most egregious is the kind of person Misha turned out to be - or at least turned into after so many years of fans blowing smoke up his ass. A bitter, entitled, ungrateful, lazy backstabber who is perfectly comfortable telling blatantly obvious and contradictory self-serving lies and nonsense. Whether that's about the ship or his relative importance to the show directly, whether that's skeevy sexual comments about Jensen/Dean, whether that's trying to paint Jared as some kind of evil bully that abused him. He keeps proving again and again there is no bar he won't limbo under.

Next is I think his performance on the show and what his continued presence on the show resulted in plot-wise from the writers. He was fine at first when he was just playing a non-human mysterious figure that only appeared now and then and had a major role in the whole structure of the apocalypse. He even had a pretty good arc leading up to the Leviathans. The problem was they kept him around as a "fan favorite" after that when they really didn't have anything for him to do but eat up screen time to give J2 time off. Would we have really gotten so much bad, circular angel politics if there wasn't a need to give Castiel something to do to keep Misha employed? I personally doubt it. Even worse than that, though? As time went on, Misha seemed to recognize that his only relevance was baiting shippers and wasting time and leaned into turning Castiel into the type of character he gets written as in so much bad D/C fanfic - a pathetic mostly human woobie who is completely useless for anything but the projection of bizarre teen romance fantasies that don't make any damn sense. Which culminated in that bizarre ambiguous queerbait he and Bobo the Clown cooked up for Castiel's exit. Which doesn't even touch his later seasons' presumable attempts at acting where his choices for Lucifer!Castiel & AU!Castiel & Empty!Castiel were all ... entirely made up of bad accents and gurning. It wasn't about any of those character's motivations or places in the narrative, it was about the laziest possible attempt to differentiate them from his normal character. Even in latter season's SPN, which IMNSHO had so, so many issues dragging things down, Misha's lack of interest in anything but the size of his paychecks and con earnings played into some of the worst.

Which brings us to D/C and the whole supposedly canon thing. Canon is literally what happened. D/C didn't happen, it's that simple. Castiel rambled some ambiguous bullshit about love and got sucked into the Empty while Dean looked bewildered and sad at him from several feet away. Misha can make up as many stories about what the character was totally thinking and how he was totally coming back in the finale and queerbaiting about what will totes happen in a revival, but not a word of it actually makes what Castiel said "I'm IN love with you". Nor does it magically manifest a reciprocation from Dean. What doesn't happen on screen but actors or TPTB say about the canon is often called Word of God. Which yes, Misha's does not outweigh everything Jensen and Jared and various showrunners have clearly said. Jensen might have gotten less confrontational about shooting it down over the years, but the underlying message hasn't changed. Meanwhile, not only do the details of Misha's stories constantly change, but the general message of his claims has flip flopped so many times. The show was about the brothers, no actually the brothers and the angel! He joked about wincest, no actually he'd never heard of it! He didn't want to say what that scene meant, no actually feel free to attack anyone who says it wasn't a homosexual declaration of love! There's more, but Misha's not worth the effort of looking them up.

As you say, at the end of the day, anyone watching the totality of the show and seeing how it ended? It's very obvious the center of the story was a platonic love story. A complicated one, granted, but Sam and Dean so many times made it very clear that it was them ... and everyone else. Except in the same way that acknowledging that doesn't serve the hellers agenda in demanding a continuation must center their ship so they can finally have visuals to go with their fanfic, acknowledging that doesn't serve Misha's agenda of fleecing them out of money for telling them it will happen for as long as he can get away with it.

[whengeorgiawentblue]

Debated about sending this, but I think I can shed some ancient fandom history light on why Misha gets a lot of hate. At least how it started if not why it's persisted.

So, anon credentials, take 'em as you will. I watched the pilot the night it aired, I created one of the first fic focused Supernatural communities on LiveJournal, hell I participated in the SN vs SPN debate.

The thing to remember is that SPN became popular fairly quickly. It hit at the right time and had the right elements to fill a gap in fandom at the time and it attracted a lot of brand new fans. (Supernatural was a lot of people's first fandom and they were feral.) So take one part migrating slash fandom looking for a home, one part baby's first fandom, and combine it with a show that only had 2 leads and they were related.

The results were somewhat predictable. Incest shipping and fans had been around for ages, but always pushed to the side and generally not allowed in regular fandom spaces. But suddenly Supernatural was on the scene and Wincest was the bees knees. For 3 years Wincest and J2 were king and everyone just sorta accepted that as a part of the fandom. Didn't have to like it, but what the hell else were we supposed to do?

(The mysoginistic shitstorm those asshole created when the Ruby and Bella casting sides were leaked pre-season 3? I've not seen it's like. What happened to Bella was because of these asshats deciding she had to go before she'd even been introduced.)

But, again, for 3 years we had the reigning champions. It was either genfic (waves), fic focused on the brother's relationship, obscure pairings very few people paid attention to, or wincest. Then something glorious happened. Lazarus Rising. Misha Collins walked onto the scene, had amazing chemistry with Jensen, and changed the fandom game completely.

They tried the same tactics they'd used against Bella and Jo, but migratory slash fandom came on strong. Because there were a lot of people who watched the show, but didn't participate in fandom because incest. Only now there was Castiel! And even better he actually had chemistry and a great actor. There was something to latch onto!

They lost their crown that night. Words can not express just how much and quickly the fandom shifted in season 4, even more so on season 5 when it was clear Cas was sticking around. They had to hate Misha, he took all of their imaginary power and prestige away. They could no longer dictate fandom policy. You might go into a fic challenge or exchange and be asked to writing something beside Sam and Dean. They had to share the stage.

Few things will cause a person to hate like losing power. Even imaginary fandom power.

Anon thank you very much for your history lesson. It's truly fascinating!

I'm loving SPN (currently watching season 10) but I really hate how dirty the did on female characters. I loved Ruby (not so much the one played by Gen...), Bella, Jo and Ellen Harvelle, Pamela, Meg... and they all are killed? And usually in he most nonsensical and unnecessary deaths (sort of they way the killed Dean in the finale). oh shit I even spoiled myself and found out Charlie Bradbury also dies 😭

I don't understand that level of misogyny and sexism coming from a mostly female-based fandom. I'm a destiel shipper and yet I loved the chemistry between Bella and Dean and I wanted them to fuck, just as I enjoyed the sexual chemistry between Cas and Meg, and I wanted them to stay alive and further develop their arcs.

It should have been amazing the first time you watched Lazarus Rising. The first time that episode aired and nobody had fucking idea of what's going on and then suddenly Castiel makes his entrance and just. everybody lose their shit. I watched that episode when I already knew about destiel and already saw gifs and pics and yet it was such a glorious and epic experience. It was amazing, it deserves to be in the history books of TV shows.

And the most popular ship ever was born, and the actors had wild chemistry on and off cameras, and their lives were changed forever. I'm sure the moment Jensen and Misha met each other for first time was a pivotal event in their own lives. Isn't amazing that the most popular ship ever was born and fueled by the intense love these actors have for each other? (Whether it's romantic or just platonic... but, personally, I believe it's romantic)

[bettsfic]

do you know anything about like, the development of the purity rhetoric that now seems to be ubiquitous in fandom and how it got there? i used to be on tumblr in like, 2014 and only recently came back to fandom and i remember everyone being generally kind of cool with things like incest ships and morally grey characters (speaking specifically re the frozen fandom and elsa/anna here lmao) whereas now it seems like the conversation about those things has drastically shifted and i am..puzzled by it

this is what i imagine that experience was like for you:

according to fanlore, purity culture started in the homestuck fandom which. based on what i know of homestuck, that tracks. however i’ve never been in homestuck so i’m not sure what that transformation was like. all i know is my personal experience with the disk horse. afaik there’s no cohesive timeline of events across fandom, and i lack the time and resources to be able to make one myself. if anyone knows of one, or wants to make one, please let me know.

i do know that purity culture is a movement started by very young teenagers, who were maybe 13-15 in 2014 and are now 18-20. they were 8-10 when ao3 was founded, and therefore seem to have a limited knowledge of fan history, censorship, and critical thinking. i’m hoping that since they’re now entering college, they’ll get some insight and broader social awareness, and this movement will finally die out in the next few years. 

on any other platform, at any other time, their toxic rhetoric would not have gained traction. but here and now, on tunglr dot com where anyone can gain a platform, where mob mentality thrives and inciting an anonymous dogpile is as easy as hitting Post, where the brokenness of this place makes it difficult to control the content you’re exposed to -- it’s the perfect storm. we live in an age of hopelessness. young people grow up with social media as an extension of their identities, tethered to devices that hold all the information in the world. i think it’s fair for them to be afraid of their futures, and i can understand the desire to control the online spaces where they have the most agency, where their voices are the loudest. 

that may explain why, but not how. as in, where did they pick up this mentality at all? @freedom-of-fanfic (whose work is a necessity in understanding the disk horse) connected anti-shipping to TERF rhetoric. i’ve linked the fanlore page because it has all of the links and some of the responses. i honestly do believe that the language surrounding purity culture has its ugly roots in TERFdom. at its core, purity culture -- the policing of female and queer sexuality -- is misogyny. 

when i started writing destiel circa 2014, fandom was as you described. wincest was a juggernaut on par with destiel. teen wolf was full of underage and noncon. a/b/o was on the rise. it seemed like fandom was a genre without restraint -- anything you wrote, if it found the right audience, would be celebrated unabashedly. people who have been following me for a long time know that i was addicted to adderall at the time and pounding out all sorts of manic nonsense. i remember living on the validation of comments (and at the time, there were lots of comments. not so much anymore, but that’s another story). i got critical comments only rarely, and they were the type that i admired -- readers without judgment thinking through the story, reacting to it earnestly. i made some of my best friends because they left long, critical comments on my work. sometimes they didn’t like it, sometimes they did, but ultimately, they were engaged, and that’s what counted.

i remember my first policing-type comment, i think at the start of all the purity nonsense. it was a destiel fic, and someone very angrily told me i should tag my bottom!cas because it was triggering. i’ve thought about that comment a lot over the years. top/bottom discourse is nothing new, but to say that bottom castiel is triggering? that was ridiculous. but then i realized -- there was a writer in fandom at the time i won’t name, who was known for being extremely sensitive (for bottom!cas especially, which they found triggering), and their very dedicated following offered fic that was safe for their fave to read. i have nothing against this person at all. they were not part of the purity discourse, they were up front about their sensitive nature, and as far as i knew (i believe i met them at a con once?) they were very kind. 

but that commenter had been clearly influenced by this person and believed that a specific fictional character receiving anal sex from another specific fictional character was actual, real triggering content, and it was my obligation as a writer to tag for it. which i did, because i felt bad, and i was baffled by that request. at the time, i wanted more than anything to be liked, and conformed wherever i could. if i got such a request now, i would ignore it because it was rudely written and honestly kind of bonkers. i’d happily add a tag for something i may have missed, or even something i’d never considered before, but there’s no reason a person can’t make that request politely. 

this situation isn’t about purity discourse proper (the commenter didn’t tell me not to write the fic, and it had nothing to do with morality), but it’s the earliest example i can think of where the process of policing had occurred: a person of influence on tumblr affected their follower’s thinking, and that follower felt entitled to command another writer to conform to that ideology.

i could be completely wrong about making these connections. maybe that commenter truly believed bottom!cas was a legitimate widespread trauma. they did not say the fic was triggering to them, but that it might be to some other people, in the same way purity police say “think of the CHILDREN” when in fact they don’t give a fuck about children at all. 

after destiel i moved to stucky, which was, at the time, a juggernaut ship where anyone could write anything. this was also the time when the term “cinnamon roll” became incredibly popular, circa 2015. it was a fun and seemingly innocuous meme, but it positioned the ideas of “purity” and “wholesomeness” in sharp relief, and cemented these ideas by beginning to give it a distinct vocabulary. “trash” was pitched as its opposite. stucky is where i first came into contact with “antis.” in destiel, there had been ship wars, sure, but it was of a different flavor than antis. destiel vs wincest wasn’t about morality in 2014. it was about everything but.

in stucky in 2015, however, the disk horse was running rampant. the MCU had a sub-section of fandom called HTP (hydra trash party) in which steve and/or bucky have dubious or nonconsensual relations with various or many members of hydra. this is the first time i remember being aware of morality becoming a cornerstone of shipping. HTP was loathed by purity police. by the time i wrote a stucky bdsm au, i’d accumulated multiple nasty anons, rude comments from entitled readers, and other nonsense that all said the same thing: your filth is not welcome here in our space of purity. go away.

but the release of the force awakens is what really turned the tide. TFA offered three major ships: stormpilot (as it was called at the time, now finnpoe), reylo, and kylux. the fandom that developed around the sequels was firmly divided. franzeska wrote an amazing meta about this phenomenon which gives some insight into the seeds of purity policing. in short, stormpilot should have been the primary pairing of the sequels, but instead many of the badwrong writers from other fandoms (and HTP specifically, which was how i entered the fandom) flocked to the blank slate of kylux. 

it took a long time for the ship to gain traction. a friend told me that kylux had started with angry star wars racists who hated that there was diversity in the sequel trilogy. and i told them no, i was there, there were twelve of us and a cornchip, and all we cared about was the dirty/darkly comedic potential of these two ridiculous villain characters in one of the biggest franchises of all time. it wasn’t that complicated. i don’t mean to dismiss the discussion of race in fandom; i think it’s important to acknowledge that racism, as franzeska describes far better than i can, plays a huge part in fandom, particularly in star wars, and it’s an important and ongoing discussion to be having, especially given what kelly marie tran has gone through, and how it affected (presumably) rose tico’s extremely limited presence in TROS.

the early fics of kylux weren’t particularly taboo. they were post-TFA hurt/comfort mostly, then slowly the bdsm and power dynamics crept in. those of us who wanted to get away from purity discourse had finally found a new home. for a while. 2016 was the golden era of kylux. we were all very happy.

i remember talking to a friend about how there were certain things i couldn’t write in certain ships. being from ye olden days of fandom, she was appalled by this idea, and told me i could write anything for any ship i wanted, wasn’t that was the whole point of transformative works? and i agreed! but i tried to explain, if you post badwrong for a fandom of purity police, you’re going to, at best, get dogpiled in your comments/inbox. at worse they will find you, call your employer, and try to ruin your life. people will tell you to kill yourself. they’ll report your tumblr and try to get your blog shut down. there are real-life, harrowing consequences to writing taboo fic, and many who write fic as a hobby don’t have the emotional energy to field these risks.

around this time, discord became popular, which offered a private space for badwrong writers to congregate. i had started grad school and didn’t have much time to write fic. metoo was happening. tromp got elected. kylux was slowly turning mainstream so a lot of us turned our attention to gradence in fantastic beasts. some went on to hannibal and other fandoms that hadn’t yet caught the attention of purity police (but it was, as it is now, just a matter of time). kylux, i feel, was specifically decimated by a single fan creator, who was like a police chief. they would get wind of someone writing underage or noncon and write a call-out post about them, and that writer/artist would get pitchforked. a few times, my comments or posts got screencapped, and posts were written urging people to stop reading my works because of how heinously immoral i was. this happened to several of my friends too. 

the great tumblr tittyban of 2017 happened, which only added fuel to the fire and further legitimized the purity movement. i shifted hesitantly to the 100 fandom, which seemed small in comparison to supernatural, marvel, and star wars. i thought it was a chill place. i was wrong; it was just as toxic as other fandoms. but i also didn’t care anymore, and i appreciated that i was mostly left alone. more importantly, i found a lot of support from other people who were as tired of the purity as i was, and @the100kinkmeme was reborn. 

the state of things is pretty abysmal. there are some really amazing writers out there writing under multiple sock accounts, keeping their fandom identities shattered so as not to call attention to themselves. as much as i understand why writers do that, and i respect that decision, i also think it’s sad. it deprives readers the chance to read that author’s other works. it limits the sense of community and our ability to make friends. it fractures the future of the genre.

what’s most important to acknowledge is that none of this is happening solely in fandom. i went to a writers’ conference where 2 of 3 panels were about the history of moral policing and censorship in art. it is worth noting that of the 40-ish visiting writers on faculty, only one (1) was a woman of color (jaimaica kincaid). naturally, older rich white people who have spent their life in the arts are all about death of the author, separation of art and artist. they’re on the total opposite side of purity police, and they won’t acknowledge at all that racism and sexism are a problem in the creative world. they don’t have any nuance on the discussion, or modern perspectives in light of metoo or popular culture. 

this went on longer than i anticipated. i neglected to mention YFIP (your fave is problematic) an old blog that started the idea of call-out culture by pulling receipts on celebrities, and how call-out culture led to cancel culture, which also aided in the purity disk horse. i think a lot can be said about how some of this stuff is genuinely good (metoo and holding men accountable for their bullshit) while also being profoundly toxic (punishing criminals via mob mentality, ruining their careers and livelihoods through social media, rather than giving them their due process in court. i understand it -- the judicial system is built by the hands of the very predators we seek to condemn, but still. the jury of the internet is never a fair trial). 

if you want to read more, my tag is tsatp (the sacred and the profane). i’m sure i’ve left out a lot, but i can only speak to my experience. i think it would be good if people would share their experience dealing with purity policing, too, so we might get a cohesive timeline in place. feel free to reblog and add your story.

[surflove808]

Can’t please everyone all the time, and I really don’t want to.  So, um....Hey there, extreme shippers!

I thought to myself, “Everybody is gonna hate me for sure now, because let’s face it - on Tumblr, you’re either on one side or another” apparently.  And I’m on neither.  So, if I lose a lot of followers, I’m cool with that.  You shouldn’t be following me anyway - I’m angry, I curse like a sailor and I don’t make gifs.  I’m just a rant machine at the end of the day, who very occasionally reblogs decent stuff.

Speaking of rants...I saw an big rant tonight about people being upset over the person confronting Jensen at JIBCON about his treatment of Misha that was in defense of the shipper, I think?   I was gonna reblog with my reply, but not worth it.  They don’t deserve to get dogpiled on.  Probably a kid.  And TBH, my response is way harsher than they deserve.

So, here’s my independent thoughts on this nonsense, and I think it applies to Cockles/Destiehellers as well as extreme J2 tinhatters.  I’m so sick of all this shit.  And frankly, some of you are giving me the fucking creeps.  And yessss, I’m tagging you.  How else will you see this?  It’s literally meant FOR YOU.

To a non-shipper like me, scrolling through Tumblr for the past 2 years has been very informative in a bad way when it comes to the whole concept of shipping in this fandom.  I initially thought it was harmless, even beautiful at times, until I started noticing that there was one common denominator (Jensen) and started to realize he was nothing more than the Superbowl ring between the Patriots and the Seahawks with some of you people.  Bottom line (and correct me if I’m wrong) As long as Jensen/Dean is fucking or being fucked by Castiel/Misha or Sam/Jared -  GAME ON.  Battle to the death, using a real, live human being as the prize.  

It really is a prizefight and it feels like if you’re not on one side, you must be on the other.   If I comment negatively on one perspective/bad behavior, I’m a BiBro.  If I swing too far the other way, I’m a “Destiheller”.  For christ’s sake I’M NON-DENOMINATIONAL when it comes to this dumpster fire.  No pun intended.

And some of you are fighting over it.  Really fighting over the rights to who gets to disrespect this guy/character and his family/co-workers/etc based on your fantastical interpretation of his sexual preferences/partners.

No respect for his privacy, his character or his personal capacity to make his own choices free from your Sauron Eye.  Because all that matters is that he’s dicking down with YOUR fave.  I get it - he’s stunning, he’s immensely talented, and let’s face it - he’d have “chemistry” with a cactus.  What’s the deal?  Is reality too much of an emotional stretch?  

This whole BiBros/Wincest/J2 tinhatters vs. Destiel/Cockles nonsense is such a mess. A swampy, shitpile of absurd motivation...I can’t wrap my head around it.  For the record:  I’m pro actor and pro people who can enjoy the show without inserting themselves into the private lives of these actors.  That’s it.  That’s apparently this blog now.  Because I’m so goddamned sick of this farce. 

Let's say that you're really into a t.v. show. Like REALLY into it. You fall in love, become invested and start following the actors via social media and conventions. Eventually you find you have immersed and invested yourself so completely in the professional and personal lives of a few of the actors, that the lines become blurry in your mind between actual fact, your version of the truth, and fanfiction. You feel familiar with them in a way that maybe you would with some of your own friends and family and start to fill in gaps (gaps that exist because you don't actually know these people) by using your vivid imagination. You might even be more invested in the interpersonal relationships of these actors than you are in your own. You want for things to be a certain way so badly, that when they're not (or don't seem to be), you feel personally aggrieved by it.  And fuck anyone who threatens that, be they fellow fans of the show, wives, co-workers, etc. The illusion of familiarity and ownership grows and grows until one day, you convince yourself that these people actually rely on your counsel and opinions with regards to their professional decisions/friendships/relationships, and you feel encouraged by your own (to quote Death) " Inflated sense of self-importance" to confront them or those close to them about perceived slights via social media, or in person at a convention, for example. There will be some support for your endeavor thanks to the shared psychosis you have with your fellow hardcore true believers. The French call it "folie a deux" (but x 1,000). And you will continue to galvanize each other to greater heights when it comes to inserting yourself into the personal lives of these actors. 

If you do this, you'll be a folk hero. People will write songs about you on Tumblr and Twitter! Conversely, there will also be plenty of people saying "What the actual fuck is wrong with you?" You will not like these people and you will feel they're only saying that because:

A: They're "haters” or “stans” for one actor more than another B: They "just can't take a joke" C: They're so blinded by hate for one of the actors that it's clouding their judgement. D:  They’re not evolved enough or smart enough to “look below the surface and see what’s REALLY going on”. 

You will continue to double down on your commitment to this "cause" because you haven't yet found a real cause that's worth fighting for. You will not listen to reason, be respectful of boundaries, or logic until you grow up and out of this obsession. It just takes time. I hope. And you will continue to take the SPN "Family" credo so literally, that you think you're in control of mitigating the personal and professional relationships of people who don't actually know you, and who you don’t actually know.  Like - at all. That being said, word on the street is - They DO care, they DO listen, and if some of you who fit the above description have accomplished anything - it's that you're now Crazy Aunt Dolores that no one wants to sit next to at Thanksgiving, but there she is, and somebody has to draw the short straw and listen to her conspiracy theories while trying to digest their turkey.  We’re all trying to be patient with Crazy Aunt Dolores, but that patience is wearing REAL thin.  At least it is for me. I’m already planning on what to wear to her funeral. Bottom line: These guys will continue to live their lives as they see fit, not how you do. You need to find a way to come to terms with that.

Certain fans will continue to twist scenes, words, photos, actions... fuck... even every minor, incidental shot of body language to suit their purposes, and I will continue to be absolutely amazed by the mental gymnastics happening on here that would/could do a world of good elsewhere.  

You can certainly invest more time. Precious energy. Keep devoting yourself to self-soothing by creating a cocoon of delusion when the truth runs contrary to your belief. Keep supporting yourself with as much content as you can find that lines up with your pre-existing notion about these people that are strangers to you. People who are unaware of your existence.  

And I don’t mean that in a crappy way, it’s a big world out there and you mean something to the people in your life - invest in THAT.  Invest in yourself as much as you do in these artificial romances/theories/whatevers and I promise you, I PROMISE you - you’ll be too busy and fulfilled to give a shit anymore. Now, off to take some of my own advice.

[eisforeidolon]

What these "nice" hellers seem to not understand is that this isn't a fight about ideologies or destiel vs Wincest. Understanding the other sides POV about ships or the finale won't bring "peace". Because the issue is their sense of entitlement: to unrelated tags on Tumblr and other fandom spaces, to the actors' acknowledgement of their ship, to the show/finale needing to be for/about them and their "mental health", to other fans' agreeing with them (and answering long ass asks). The issue 1/2

Isn't that we have differing POVs. It's that they think their POV is either universal among all fans except Wincesties or that it should be and that it should be the only representation of SPN. A perfect example is that ask. Show me one Wincest shipper who went into a hellers ask box and asked to understand why they don't see Sam and Dean's relationship as romantic. The issue is their purity culture nonsense and taking fandom way too seriously like it's a real life issue and their only identity.

**********************

Yep, that's it exactly. It's not the ship, it's the superiority complex and entitlement.

Any big fandom with at least two major ships is probably going to have some conflict. Hell, sometimes even one big ship can turn its fandom into a massive top/bottom wankfest. Except that's not and never has been our problem with 'hellers - which is the whole reason we refer to them as hellers instead of just d3stiel shippers in the first place! As well as why no amount of disingenuous blathering on about how they totally just want understanding and peace changes anything.

In that ask, along with all their regular behavior towards other fans and even the show's creators? They make it clear, even the "nice" ones, that the only form of peace and understanding they would accept is for everyone else to agree with them or STFU. Nope, take your creepy cult-like conversion mission elsewhere - or better yet, buy a clue and realize the world doesn't revolve around your fanfic.