With a heavy heart I share the news that dear @wetsammywinchester passed away in August.
We can all attest to Paula's wit, smarts, compassion, and sense of fun. She was an enthusiastic collaborator and adventurous writer. She loved writing, and supporting others' art. She was down to earth, and didn't suffer fools or foolish takes, but she never lost her attitude of welcome. Being in fandom made her very happy, and she shared that happiness around. She is everything you could want in a fandom friend and community member; we have missed her presence during her illness and will miss her forever.
Paula passed far too young and her going is a devastation to her family. Please keep her son in your thoughts. Donations in her name can be made to Gilda's Club, Minnesota.
Raise an old fashioned in her memory; chuck on Playthings. And any time you see a wet Sammy in the wild, know that dear P is smiling.
What's your favourite headcanon of something that happened in the Impala?
After Dean dies, Sam keeps the Impala sacrosanct. Even after he shuts down the bunker and he's starting to hunt less because he's aware his grief and depression are making him reckless and he'll probably get himself killed and he promised Dean he'd live--even then, he still keeps everything in the Impala exactly as it was. He listens to Dean's rickety ancient cassettes and keeps all Dean's phones charged and in the glove box, and if anyone calls in on one, those hunts he always takes.
But then DJ is born. Sam wants to be a good father. He settles down and gets a home and a second car, but the Impala is still his first home and it's Dean's legacy, and would Dean want his nephew to treat it like a couch wrapped in plastic at some distant elderly relative's house? Is that really honoring him?
So he gets a car seat for the Impala. He takes DJ out on rides. DJ spits up on the vinyl. He spills his organic 100% all natural no added ingredients cran-razz juice boxes all over everything. Miracle continues to shed everywhere.
DJ goes to kindergarten. He wants to listen to the same dumb kids' music as all his friends. Sam looks for cassettes of it, but of course there aren't any, even on ebay, so he grits his teeth and installs an ipod jack again. His nightmares get worse for a few nights, but nothing bad happens. It's fine and DJ loves it.
No one calls on Dean's old phones anymore. Sam lets the batteries run dead. He listens to his own music in the house and in his other car, of course, but in the Impala, except for DJ's picks, he still only listens to Dean's tapes; the ones that used to be their father's. Miracle scratches the seats up when they forget to trim his claws.
DJ keeps growing. He turns 16. Sam teaches him to drive in his other car, but he should get to drive Dean's car too. Dean would want him to.
Their first drive out together in the Impala with DJ behind the wheel, DJ grins slyly and says, "Hey, dad. I got you some old people music."
DJ shuffles through his ipod, and they drive out together through the autumn countryside, windows down and DJ's pick for Sam blasting from the speakers. His son knows him. It's Green Day, Sam's favorite all those years ago in college.
"Well, maybe I'm the faggot, America," he and DJ sing at the top of their lungs. Red and yellow leaves fall all around them. He feels centered and happy. There's no denying it's good.
"In television dreams of tomorrow, we're not the ones who're meant to follow," they yell together.
Dean would've liked this song if he'd let himself.
You said you'd keep watching the show just because of Sam, why?
he is me as I am him as we are we as we are all.together or whatever the Beatles said..I connect with Sam on a spiritual level..idk.whay it..is.about him.but theres something really special that I rarely feel because of s TV character. he had the same impact on me as jesus had on christians..he has suffered more than.jesus arguably and also definitely has a.better haircut.great Carhartt jacket and small cow swag. he looks like. ammonk in S1.lucifdr simps.for him. great haircut...alwaysm...love that he becomes a mlif..my baby girl.. he prays everyday and he is haunted by visions.addicted to demon blood because of hot girl who helped him free lucifer.again great Hair.what more could you want
is goncharov (1973) really that much less real than whatever show the destiel bloggers have been watching with their extrasensory perception for 15 years
Iâve usually seen queer baiting (in its original form) in relation to how Supernatural used ship baiting of its queer ships to make bank off of fans. Do you think thereâs perhaps an argument here, but maybe one thatâs been expanded to broadly? (Much the same way the word p*dophile has been grossly expanded past itâs original meaning in recent years)
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No. I do not think there is an argument there.
In earlier seasons, even after Cas showed up, SPN made jokes about the Wincest shippers, who were the big faction they heard from in the early years. Current Destiel fans on Tumblr think any gay joke on SPN is aimed at them, but they're all actually either mocking Wincest or mocking the idea that a gary stu manly hero could be girly or queer.
SPN was originally conceived of as a show for straight guys who like cars. They did sort of pivot to deal with the fandom they got instead of the fandom they wanted, but we're still vastly overestimating 1. how many tumblry m/m shipper types were in the overall audience and 2. how much they cared.
My objection to 'queerbaiting' is not that it has broadened.
My objection is that I have worked in Hollywood, and NO, IT DOES NOT LOOK GAY TO THEM.
Buddy cops: not gay
Homophobic no homo jokes that make the characters sound gay: not gay
Two men becoming emotionally intimate in a suggestive way: not gay
Literally anything other than men actively kissing or having sex on screen or delivering the line "I am a homosexual": NOT GAY
I cannot begin to emphasize just how profoundly the mindset of your average Hollywood type is not the mindset of a tumblr type. Even the queer people I met were extremely vanilla cis monosexuals who were very "???" over any idea about surprise bi characters. Furthermore, queer subtext as seen by queer film scholars of a decade or two ago is something Hollywood might grasp, but it's completely different from what Tumblr and AO3y fandom see as subtext.
Yes, a few individual people who are closer to "us" do work in big media, but their numbers are very few even compared to out queer people in Hollywood. Furthermore, they are rarely directors and showrunners, creative producers, studio heads, or anybody else who has final say on anything. Most of the time, they are at best one of the writers in a large writers room and more often the coffee gofer.
If we start talking about media like indie webcomics, there's more to discuss, but anything that's remotely mainstream has the same issues, including if it's from the UK's media industry and a lot of others outside of Hollywood.
Fandom m/m subtext is BL subtext. A mangaka might bait our kind of fan. Mainstream media from the West will not. The people making final artistic decisions at the top fundamentally do not understand BL subtext even if they are cis gay men.*
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Steve and Bucky are a classic example of heterosexual friendship.
Romance looks like pursuing someone and winning them by being awesome and better than your rivals, not by forming intimate emotional bonds with them.
Mainstream tv m/m looks like that execrable cop show with Alan Cumming where he had the male equivalent of the nagging wife who didn't want him to do a dangerous job.
This is the model upon which US live action TV works. It is the model upon which SPN works. None of the SPN "evidence" means jack shit if you understand the context of its creation.
* Shut up, Hannibal fans. Yes, there are rare exceptions.
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Supernatural was watched by a large proportion of people who did not ship any queer ships on the show. The people making it did not care about queer dollars.
99% of the bait was either mocking jokes or totally accidental because of wildly mismatched expectations.
When I was a kid, maybe 14 or so (which is, you know, 20+ years ago), I belonged to a Yahoo! mailing list for an anime called Gundam Wing. It was mostly populated by other teens, of varying ages, as it was started by a teen and her friends. Eventually it migrated, when Yahoo! groups started as forums, and even branched off into non-GW related stuff in a second forum.
One of the things I remember the most clearly is the oldest person in the group. Her name was Steelsong. She was a 40-something Dom with a sub whose name we knew even though we knew nothing else. She ran her own fanfic archive because the web was still handmade HTML and navigated in webrings and Iâm pretty sure Google didnât exist or was only barely, barely launched and not well known. She was kind and patient and we loved her. She treated everyone on the group with the respect given any adult, even though most of the rest of the world was still treating us like we were children. Not teenagers even, but children. She never once condescended to any of us, never made our youth a barrier to her respect, never treated us like we were incapable of being full people or like we were less than her because we were young.
I remember that she hosted our fanfiction, as absolutely terrible as it was (and I still have some of it, I am WELL aware of how cringingly terrible it is, just absolute nonsense garbage), right there alongside of other fic that was soul-achingly beautiful. Not a separate section for her friends or for kids, just right there like we were good enough to feature alongside other authors. I never once received crit from her that I didnât ask for, only support. Only love. I am still writing today partly because Steel was so kind about our fic, fanfic and original.
I remember that when I started doing clay sculpture, she commissioned a tiny pair of dragons from me, to support me doing artwork. She sent a check my mom cashed for me, and my mom helped me mail it when it was finished. It broke in transit, and Steel assured me that she mended it and that it was still beautiful. It was a small gold dragon curled up with a small silver dragon.
I remember that her patience knew no bounds. I remember that she was there for us, regardless of reason. When we wanted to know silly things like what to do with a single AA battery, she answered. When we had serious questions about sex, she answered. When we had questions about writing, she taught us. When one of our group members, a young gay teen in Australia, ended up in the hospital and then stopped making posts, and we all knew what had happened, she let us talk to her about it because we couldnât go to our own parents, even though we had just lost a friend.
She was not a replacement to my parents, but she was an extra parent, in some ways. A friend, certainly, but someone that had been through more life than we had and was willing to pass on knowledge if we asked for it. Someone older that we trusted with things that were too uncomfortable to go to our parents or teachers or whatever about, because we already knew she wasnât going to judge us or something, and that we would get an honest answer.
I donât know why Iâm remembering this so hard tonight, and Iâm not sure if thereâs a point to sharing this, except that I know sheâs gone now. She was ill the last time we spoke, and her site went down a long time ago, and I miss her. She was a huge influence on my life, then and now. She was hope, for me, that life as an adult didnât have to be boring, it wouldnât have to mean giving up the things I loved and Becoming Only Responsible With No Fun. Her presence meant I had hope I could still write and play with friends even when I wasnât âa kidâ anymore. And sheâs gone, and I miss her, and I wanted to share her from the perspective of youth, and the perspective over twenty years later has provided me.
And I think of her, when people go off about older folks being in fandom with younger folks. Iâm an older folks now, or at least middle aged folks because there are certainly folks older than me still, but I wasnât always. Iâve been here since i was a younger folks, and I know how much Steelâs presence and support meant to me, how much she helped not just me but everyone on that group. And I think of the people saying older folks donât belong in fandom, and that they shouldnât interact with younger folks at all, and I just think⌠I canât agree. I needed that kind of solid presence in my life back then and even at the age I am now, I need the folks older than me to stay. I want them here.
So I guess, like, if youâre here and youâre 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or whatever, I want you here in fandom with me, still. Your presence here is a comfort. It is hope. It is a reminder that life will continue to be fun, even as I get older, myself. And if youâre younger and you have this sort of elder in your groups, I hope that they are like Steel. I hope they are kind and patient and supportive, and that knowing them gives you hope for your own future. I hope in twenty years you look back and remember them fondly.
"Much of what people claim is baiting is [...] mostly cishet white men who did a poor job [.]" Loss of some context there, but can you elaborate? Isn't this almost exactly what queerbaiting has historically been defined as? When largely non-queer writers make a "joke" about how "gay for each other" two characters seem in passing, with no intention to make it canon, but the knowledge that they have a queer fan base who will latch onto the idea? I agree with everything you've said except this.
Hi!! Omg sorry this took me so long to answer, itâs such a complicated subject and I've been really trying to parse out my feelings and find a way to succinctly describe the difference between what I perceive as queer baiting and what feels simply like homophobic writing. Because I definitely think supernatural has homophobic writers/writing. But it doesnât feel the same to me as queer baiting, which is a very specific form of homophobia, and the distinction between the two is very tough for me to operationalize. But hereâs my attempt!!
Short version: While the writers of SPN are guilty of homophobic writing, I donât think they ever intended to draw a queer audience in or to hook destiel shippers, and I also donât think the queer subtext and moments are limited to Dean and Cas, or Dean/Deanâs sexuality at all, as theyâre quite pervasive. If one wanted to make the argument the show baited, one could just as easily use moments between Lucifer and Crowley, Crowley and Cas, and a variety of other characters because Supernatural is RIFE with gay jokes and queer coded villains and a bunch of other common homophobic writing pitfalls. The fixation and emphasis on Destiel to me, highlights a conformation bias in the fans who ship it, and not an actual analysis on the overall writing the show. BUT HERE!! Is the very long essay version backing this claim and picking it all apart:Â
I feel like in order for a piece of media to fall into the category of queer baiting, there has to be bait. You donât go fishing for a queer fanbase without putting something on the hook first, and I just donât believe that was the original intention with Dean and Cas. I really donât. When Cas was introduced in season four, I donât think Kripke or the writers had ANY IDEA of how wildly popular he would be, OR how the fanbase would latch onto him as someone to ship Dean with. I DONâT think he was written to draw that sort of audience, and I donât think he and Deanâs interactions had that singular, cruel, wink wink nudge nudge are they or arenât they (but if you say they are weâre gonna tell you youâre wrong!!!) element that, say, BBCâs Sherlockâs writers clearly intended to laminate over that particular pairing. They werenât even presented as a dynamic duo, or a buddy-cop pairing, or brothers in arms, or best friends. Their relationship was introduced initially as a Deus ex machina to get Dean back topside and also as a way to introduce the biblical themes in Supernaturalâs apocalypse storyline. I personally think the fandom reaction to Cas, and the influx of Dean/Cas content (which steadily amassed over the next several years, reaching a climactic boom around 2011-12 with the rise of Superwholock) came as a surprise to the writers at first, and was unforeseen, and definitely not an intentional manipulation or attempt to hook queer fans. The show already had queer fans and it already had shippers.Â
I actually think its important to acknowledge the relationship the writers (and actors) already had with these existing shippers who watched the show who, up until this point, were predominantly wincest shippers. There was acknowledgement, both behind the scenes, at cons, and of course, TEXTUALLY, within the show, that we existed and that it wasnât really a problem. When the show aired in 2005, this was pretty unusual and actually felt good, after an era where shippers were treated so disparagingly and aggressively. Like I know thatâs not the case anymore but in 05/06, to have the showrunner of a show be like âyeah thereâs homoerotic subtext between the brothers and you guys are picking up on thatâ felt HUGE, even if it would be viewed as baiting or manipulation by today's standards. Of course, this was coupled with lazy and homophobic (but also very of the time) writing. There were instances of Sam and Dean getting mistaken as a gay couple, lots of gay jokes, etc. But if I remember correctly, within the context of 2005-07 this was regarded in pretty good faith by the fans. We KNEW the pairing would never be canon (they were brothers and it was on the CW) and it was far before phrases like queer baiting were introduced or widely discussed within the fandom lexicon. It was just SUCH a different time, with different fandom rules and different ways of going about interacting with writers and actors. And THAT was the established precedent when Cas was introduced: shippers being perfectly fine with the writers throwing us bones, and no expectation what so ever of that going anywhere.Â
Of course, that drastically changed. Firstly, Cas and Dean were not an incest pairing so it COULD technically happen (even if at the time there was no precedent for it and very little subtext to suggest it), and secondly, fandom began to change. Both as a result of Destielâs massive and unexpected spike in popularity and also because of the social shift from single fandom or even single pairing archives and message boards to massive multi-fandom websites like twitter and tumblr with an endless scroll model. Suddenly you could @ a writer of SPN, or Jensen Ackles. Suddenly you had a ton of BBC Sherlock fans on your tumblr dash discussing queer baiting. Suddenly, youâre being surrounded by queer discourse and the language of social justice is EVERYWHERE, permeating fandom discussion, which you can consume infinitely with strangers if you just keep scrolling. I REALLY think itâs important all these things were happening alongside each other, because they absolutely contributed to the ways in which the Supernatural fandom was shaped, and how destiel became a juggernaut pairing even with very little subtext present in the show!!Â
Ultimately, all of these changes led to a series of hugboxes and hotbeds where fandom discussion began to cross pollinate (or pollute tbh) with queer discourse, and also where fans validated each other in echo chambers of this could really happen, guys! And many of the fans who actively shipped destiel at the time (particularly those who DID NOT ALSO SHIP WINCEST and who were very violently anti-wincest and used this to position themselves on a moral high ground) became very invested with the possibility Destiel happening in the show. And now, newly âeducatedâ on the language of social justice, armed with the same arguments BBC Sherlock fans had been using in their own fandom circles, and now with the means to actually interact with the writers, they began to bring destiel up at conventions and online, with an air of entitlement and a mask of superiority. They convinced themselves this wasn't a matter of ship wars or a ship preferencesâŚit was a crusade, a fight against homophobia.Â
And thatâs when things really started to get messy and devolve, imo. Because these shippers were backing the writers and actors into a super weird corner, where these mostly straight cis guys who did not intend to write or portray Dean and Castiel that way were forced to acknowledge the ship lest they be accused of being homophobic on twitter. But it was a catch22. If they didnât say what the fans wanted them to say, they would be accused of being homophobic. If they DID play into it, theyâd get accused of queer baiting. Both speaking to and ignoring the issue would galvanize this very vocal subset of destiel shippers into feeling disenfranchised that their ship (which again, at this point, did not have very many textual or subtextual moments and was not presented as a romantic ship and was not anticipated to amass so much content) wasnât canon, as it COULD and SHOULD become canon. And anyone who disagreed or any other path in the storytelling was homophobic, by default.Â
Now, flash back to the climate the writers were used to: wincest shippers who were grateful for the tossed bones and jokes and who had no expectation of a canon pairing. I think that after the writers were faced with the unanticipated phenomenon of Destiel, they went about interacting with these fans in very much the same way they did with their existing shippers: playfully. But the climate had changed. The fans had changed. Fandom changed. And Supernatural did not keep up. They changed show runners right around this time and Gamble took over after Kripke, and in my opinion SHE, more than any of the other show runners, did not bait. She actively, observably tried to push destiel shippers away by introducing the Meg/Cas text, writing Cas as broken/crazy in S6, and partnering him Crowley in S7. And if I remember, DESTIEL SHIPPERS HATED IT! They lauded her as the worst showrunner, accused her characters of being OOC, and of sidelining Casâs importance. There was soooo much intense anti Gamble-era wank at the time and I distinctly remember it because I LOVED seasons 6 and 7 and is was surprised they were so seemingly universally hated. The reputation remains, too, so many people still refer to these as the worst seasons and there was a lasting ripple effect in the later seasons of the show, where writers attempted to deviate away from the feeling of the Gamble era because of how loathed it was.Â
So, the future writers and showrunners saw what happened if you DIDNât include Dean/Cas moments. They saw the consequences of trying to write compelling relationships for Cas elsewhere, and of focusing on the brothers. And so I suppose you can make an argument that after this point on, the writing of Dean and Casâs relationship BECAME baiting in that the writers shifted the writing style to accommodate these fans without actually giving them what they want. But, I feel like because it was shaped so MUCH by environment and circumstance and things that were out of the writers control (like destiel shippers writing loads of OOC meta and episode analysis that literally relied zero percent on the actual text of the show to back their ship which was, at this point, actively being railed AGAINST in the writers room) it doesn't constitute as my understanding of baiting, which requires some INTENT on the writers part to hook fans in with a popular pairing. Not a awkward and poorly dealt with reaction to an unanticipated interpretation that was born in FANDOM, not in the story you set out to tell.Â
I just donât feel like that intent was there initially. And I feel like the subsequent poor dealing with it was homophobic but IN RESPONSE to these fans initial inappropriate behavior, which was not prompted and invited by the show, but by fandom climate. Which is not to say that its good or ok! Itâs not! Just that the order in which things happened and the manner in which destielâs popularity rose was not an affect of the show itself initially tossing bait. I would understand it so much more if i felt like the writers presented Destiel as a ship or a central character dynamic the way Sherlock BBC did with that pairing but they didn't. Itâs popularity was circumstantial, not baited or hooked and reeled in.Â
Like If you look at the things the Hellers refer to as âbaitâ or important moments in those early seasons, they donât happen exclusively between Dean and Cas, they happen between nearly every character because the writers are homophobic (ie, gay jokes, Dean feeling uncomfortable with physical contact from men, etc. ) In fact, many of the moments they refer to as âevidenceâ Dean is bisexual or has feelings for Cas is actually just as easily suited to demonstrating Dean is homophobic or repressed! It makes me super uncomfortable that so many people felt baited by a character being depicted, onscreen, as homophobic or disgusted by another manâs affections.Â
And so many of the other âmomentsâ are decontextualized or invented! This is a show thatâs LITTERED with gay jokes and homophobic moments at the same time it also contains a multitude of episodes regarding intimacy between men and love between men, not to mention gay characters (both treated well and treated poorly depending again on the writer and moment in history it happened). The issue of homophobia in the writing of supernatural is SO much bigger than baiting, and EVEN BIGGER than specifically baiting Destiel shippers, but that seems to be the only element these fans choose to focus on and thatâs such a red flag for me. A failure to demonstrate any understanding or even interest in the other types of homophobia present in the writing, OR in the fandom history surrounding and shaping the show to me just indicates that this STILL ship wars disguised as something bigger.Â
long story short:Â I think these fans gaslit themselves into thinking they saw something that wasnât there because of the changing fandom landscape at the time, and then began behaving inappropriately to everyone involved on the show, and eventually reaped the seeds they sowed as the clueless, homophobic writers scrambled to react and accommodate.Â
Semi unrelated but I think Misha Collins might be the only person I consider ACTUALLY baiting in an intentional way? which is wild because I feel like they actually enjoy the way he interacts with the destiel shippers? He seems largely responsible for drumming up hope/entitlement in their camp Imo!
ANYWAY!! I hope this al makes sense omg I realize its a fucking essay.Â
On Fandoms, Age, and Gender: The Politics of â Putting Away Childish Thingsâ
Weighing in on yet another round of âfan spaces are youth spacesâ (aka âgo home and knit, old ladyâ or âYouâre old enough to be my/someoneâs mom! gross!â )
Consider these thoughts:
Thereâs a whole set of interests and behaviors that you might become interested in as you grow from child to adolescent to young adult and take greater interest in the wider world.
You might like horses, or dolls. Or building models. You might play soccer, or follow baseball every summer and learn about box scores.  You might follow the college football draft, or love a pop band. You might deeply admire a rock band and learn to play the guitar. You might love superheroes and see all their movies. You might love space opera and collect paperback books. Maybe you collect trading cards of your favorite team players â or movie moments. You probably get t-shirts and posters of teams, or media outlets. You might get deeply into a social or political cause.
Those are all expressions of interest in the world, all with associated social aspects, many with associated creative actions.Â
And then you get older. And hereâs the thing about that list. The things on that list that are âfor boys?â  Are also âfor men.â  But the things on that list that are âfor girlsâ or âfor nerds?â Are only âfor children.â Â
Adult men wear brightly colored team clothing and paint their faces without shame.  They join fantasy football leagues and hang out online.  They follow Phish (or continuously talk about how they did when that was a thing). They spend vast sums on tickets to bowl games.  They get excited all over the internet about Geddy Leeâs greatest hits. They spend long afternoons on the golf course, playing very bad golf.
No one tells them to grow upÂ
An adult woman who turns a childhood dollhouse into a beautiful scale model of a real Victorian home is âeccentric.â An adult man who builds a vast HO train layout in his basement is a âtrain enthusiast.â  An adult woman who displays her favorite Bryer horses is âodd,â an adult man with a shelf of signed baseballs is âa collectorâ or even âan investor.âÂ
Adult women making fanart of attractive movie stars is âcreepy,â while adult men decorating their garages with calendar art of scantily-clad very-young women is âjust what guys do.â
Interests and hobbies that were feminine and are taken up by men become acceptable.  When The Beatles were greeted with mobs of fainting teen girls, they were a âboy band.â When young men discovered them, they became Serious Musicians. Â
Over and over, across fields of interest, things that girls like are âtoys and games and childishâ and should be left behind by adults, while things that boys like are âhobbies and sportsâ that are lifetime pastimes. And acceptable âhobbiesâ for adult women?  Most are things that could be coded as household chores, but generations of women have worked to turn into enjoyable pastimes: knitting, sewing, quilting. Home decor. Baking.  Many adult women (myself included) enjoy doing those things in their free time and have elevated them to art forms. But that doesnât change the fact that theyâre rooted in utility, while âmenâs hobbiesâ are, by and large, rooted in leisure.
Look around you and follow the pattern. And then, before you ask âWhy are adult women in fan spaces,â maybe ask âwhy do I feel like adult women donât get to have fun?âÂ
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