I didn't mean for this to get so long, so fair warning on that, and I know it's not meant to be super serious, but I gotta chime in on the claims of how influential destiel is to fandom and fan culture as a whole, because it's just so overstated.
I knew destiel wasn't patient zero for omegaverse! (I didn't remember that it was RPF. Bonkers.) I do think that destiel probably popularized the concept, but it's wild to see how people saying things like "destiel is as influential as Kirk/Spock! Know your roots!" while others claim the rights to something that 1. wasn't even related to the ship in the first place, and 2. features a lot of tropes that are clearly and heavily inspired by Amok Time/Pon Farr and are therefore the result of the very ship they're claiming destiel matches in influence.
For the record, I'm not being hyperbolic about that, it's actually been said:
If we're talking about overall franchise influence, Gundam characters have been featured on postage stamps in Japan, as has Rose of Versailles, a key inspiration for Revolutionary Girl Utena, which in turn was a major inspiration for G-Witch. Star Trek has also been featured on postage stamps in multiple countries, with a lot of them featuring Kirk and Spock specifically! I could be wrong, but I can't find any instance that this was done for Supernatural, much less prominently featuring Dean and Cas.
The day that Suletta and Miorine being married was stated as canon (before Bandai tried to walk it back and then later were revealed to be lying liars who lie), the series occupied three of Japan's top five daily trends on Twitter:
The day that destiel was canonized, none of the related tags made the top five at all for the States, and none of them did the following day, either:
It's worth mentioning that the big destiel event happened during the 2020 US Presidential Election, which was obviously a big fucking deal, but I want to point out that #GetWellSoonYoongi (well wishes for Suga of BTS after he tested positive for covid) managed to hit the third spot in the trends for the day that destiel got the most overall posts and searches, so it's clearly not impossible to overtake the election with a fannish topic.
I also feel compelled to point out that the overall volume of posts out of the States is higher than those out of any other country, so while some people are certain to trot out the overall post count as proof that destiel is clearly more influential, that is not the case when the States account for 105.4 million users and Japan accounts for 73.4 million. The States have almost 50% more users than Japan, of course there are going to be more posts.
Basically, the influence of destiel in certain remaining pockets of tumblr might be impressive, but outside that very closed ecosystem it's pretty minimal. This poll is based on tumblr's top 100 ships for 2023, where destiel ranked #3 (again) and SuleMio was new to the list at #59, above such staples as stucky, SasuNaru, JohnLock, Korrasami and Catradora, so it's not like it has no presence on the site—I personally haven't seen a non-meme destiel related post come across my dash since 2020, but SuleMio and G-Witch pop up a couple times a month. (Gundam in general pops up pretty much daily. I do not follow any blogs specifically catering to this franchise or series in any capacity.)
Claiming that destiel stands head to head with a fandom juggernaut like Kirk/Spock—a ship which is also on that list at #48, having moved up nine spaces since the previous year in spite of having existed since 1967—because you personally engage with it more often than you do with ships like SuleMio is a pretty egregious overstatement of its impact on fan culture as a whole.
Asserting influence that does not exist as an argument for why people should support destiel instead of a ship that's also on the list from which this bracket was made and therefore is also rightfully included in this poll, because you've never happened to see it before, is ridiculous. Claiming that SuleMio only exists because of a series with significantly less cultural impact than the ship's own parent franchise is even more ridiculous.
God forbid women (or any country other than the United States) do anything.
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