sastiel love hour. who up reading they sastiel.

if destiel became canon i hope no destiel fan go around saying 'I TOLD U SO' to other ships and telling other ships their ship is meaningless. :((((

Wow, thanks for blessing my inbox with such a fantastically awful leading statement. What, you want me to say Destiel shippers won’t do that? I mean, there’s a bazillionity of them and a lot of them think Destiel is going canon or should do or at least would take canon as utter vindication of everything they’ve read in the text, which is a quantifiable, serious amount of storytelling and tropes which all directly imply Destiel. If people throw a street party because it happened, that’s their street party, you know? 

I am not very well qualified to talk about wider shipping culture but Destiel fans who see it in canon have a certain axe to grind with the show because of the feeling that it’s textually present and many (myself included) would not have thought to ship it until something in the text flipped them and sheer incredulity about the depth of this story brought them to fandom and interacting with others to analyse and understand the story better. 

I don’t believe other ships including ones involving Cas and Dean elsewhere have anywhere near the same textual level of storytelling and tropes to give them a shadow of what Dean and Cas have. I posted last night about how early Destiel was ship teasing without storytelling intent, and other prominent ships never moved beyond ship teasing and one of them certainly never will and can’t. But for YEARS Destiel has been running on the rails of a narrative between and about the characters which can be taken romantically. If it went canon it would not be the show just randomly picking one of 12 out of a hat and giving it their blessing.

Like, yes I suppose it does make the shippers look entitled if you ship on different means, e.g. chemistry, blurred lines between actor and character, which ones are hot and you think would look good fucking each other, and all the reasons which are great for shipping characters (and I’m not judging - I like ships which are completely implausible, not implied in canon, or are otherwise deeply unsuitable for shipping like Destiel. 3 of my coda fics this season were Mary/Charlie, Mary/Ketch and Cas/Benjamin instead of Destiel, and of those only Mary/Ketch was actually based on canon, and Mary/Charlie was hauling out a dead character who I thought would be great to ship Mary with from the realms of implausibility. And I can understand if you have all or a main ship which is in these sort of brackets instead of rooting for the canon storyline and waiting for it to provide you with all your material, then it’s different and feels different.) 

But I don’t think Destiel shippers enjoying the idea of it going canon (because this is what’s upsetting you RIGHT NOW, not the idea that it POTENTIALLY goes canon and everyone’s a dick, you obviously feel like people enjoying it IN canon are being dicks RIGHT NOW) is offensive to other shippers, or that if you meet us on the grounds of fanon where all the shipping goes on, we’re anything more than more well-fed by canon than other shippers who don’t ship off of canon, because we get a lot of material for our ship from canon. 

But great transformative works always add to the experience, and there’s so many interpretations of the characters in fanon which have moved 1000 miles from canon, in every possible way, which really just end up on what people LIKE to read, if they like D/s or AUs where they’re socially awkward hipsters or tentacle porn or canonverse but huge drastic changes. EVERY ship in every fandom has variations and fanon lives of the characters and if the fandoms are large enough, sub-fandoms within them that specifically enjoy certain dynamics. Canon HELPS but it does not define Destiel shippers in what we write about and how we enjoy the ship, and some people enjoy it only in fanon because they think canon Dean is a dick or they hate what’s happened to Cas since whenever or they just like an old dynamic which is easier to wallow in in increasingly AU settings and end up just reading coffee shop romances where the mains happen to be called Dean and Cas, and some people can probably only get into it if it’s so gritty and canon they can still taste the last episode on their tongue when they read the coda fic. 

As a cumulative experience of what fandom is, Destiel going canon is ONLY vindication, because we can enjoy it in fanon as is, but the issues around the canon debate and representation and what have you are an entirely other thing and on THAT playing field canon is the only vindication.

But in that world, it’s not about other ships at all. I’m sorry, but something like Sastiel is just not part of the argument because in canon it’s not teased, not laid down in the depths of the show’s foundations as important, and it’s not part of the massive metatextual, media and fandom and show dance about the show sucking it up and making Dean bi and Destiel canon because that is only the MEDIUM in which the show needs to deal with the representation problem. If the thing had been swirling around Sam n Cas the entire time, then the debate would be about Sam and Cas. But it’s not. It’s about Dean and Cas. 

Like, I’m sorry if other shippers want in on the idea of ship going canon vindication but on this show there’s such an entrenched, weird battle about Destiel’s place in the narrative, it’s 9 years too late on this one for it to be any other ship in any other way on this show. 

I mean I’d say to other shippers, don’t go out and be a dick to people if it DOES go canon, just enjoy it and try not to be too horrible even if you do get involved in ship wars, like, just take the win and be the bigger person, but that comment isn’t exactly going to do much because I’m not the queen of this ship issuing decrees which seems to be the only positive outcome you’d ever think you could get out of asking me this ridiculous question. Like. What the heck were you expecting me to say? Oh no boo hoo we’re so nice, we’d never do that? It’s a gazillion shippers and a lot of them feel bitter and disenfranchised and they’re not going to consider that they are somehow being rude to other ships, because this is not the side of fandom where you ought to be respectful to people’s fanon practices, but essentially a conflict and we all walked into it where the battle lines were already drawn and it’s this ship and it’s inherently political to ship it if you do so from canon rather than politely excusing yourself to fanon.

If you feel threatened by the ship’s presence in canon because you can see as well as everyone else and are just pretending there’s an equivalence between Destiel and other fanon ships, as if the fanon stage and the canon battle are the same thing, then  you’re just being deliberately obtuse as a troll. I mean, I don’t even fucking fight the canon thing that hard, I am a chill shipper who enjoys watching it unfold in canon and don’t make strong demands of canon, but I still know my ship is politicised on this stage about being canon or not and we have to think abou that all the time and if I HAVE to I will wade in as fight hard that it has full right to go canon and should, and that is NOT disrespecting other ships, it’s working with what I already have in my hands immediately from the moment I went “shit, there really is something to all this lovelorn staring they do at each other, isn’t there?”

Anyway YOUR SHIPS, DESTIEL INCLUDED, ARE SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT IN FANON AS MUCH AS EACH OTHER AND BECAUSE THEY MEAN SO MUCH TO WHOEVER IS SHIPPING THEM. END OF. 

But fanon is fanon and you’re making a ridiculous argument equating “meaning” aka what fans draw from shipping and what makes them feel good about it into creating transformative works about their ship, to the idea of Destiel going canon as if it’s somehow going to do ANYTHING to the fanon.

Like, people with radically different from canon ideas ABOUT DESTIEL can cope with the show consistently not actually being what they really dig but use it just as a jumping off point to their personal interests in what they use fanon for - whether it’s kink or emotional healing or personal empowerment or just for writing and imagination like the fic writers who mostly just enjoy creating stories and like using fanworks rather than original works to hone their craft and feel confident and comfortable with what they’re doing. I mean, fan artists do the same. They might have the faces of the characters but they’re being depicted in a million different ways nothing LIKE the show.

Fanon is not threatened by canon. Even when canon trounces fanon, fanon rolls its eyes and carries on. And mostly fanon is so far beyond the realm of canon that it’s fairly untouchable anyway. The show can’t do much to fuck up my Cas works in a diner and Dean comes and hangs with him there AU because Cas does not work in a diner and Dean is not exactly up to flirting with a dude across a diner counter all day every day while Sam is literally sitting in the corner the entire time rolling his eyes. If Destiel still goes canon, I still hold the means of production here - I get to decide on my own terms if and when one of them snaps and asks the other to marry them. I would have the luxury to put off making them canon in my fanon even though in real canon they already were together. It’s a fearsome power :P 

And I mean, something like Sabriel has enough little connections to canon that its fans can at least show them in the same room interacting and draw from that, but 99.99999999% of that ship is built out of tropes and fun and reading each other’s works and building off of that and creating a ship pretty much out of nowhere for their own amusement and gratification. Canon Destiel’s going to have a hard job doing anything to upset that boat, you know? If you’re offended you WANT to be offended.

Anyway I have now finished my cup of tea so that’s enough grumbling from me but seriously what the heck did you even send me this for? It’s such a petty, miserable view about fandom. If you enjoy your ships you enjoy your fucking ships and nothing can upset that and everyone should leave each others’ fanon fun the hell alone.