#they’re fun characters! they have a lot of nuance! unfortunately media literacy is at an all time low!

[quietwingsinthesky]

I’m kind of new in the Supernatural fandom and I genuinely do not understand the hate so many people seem to have towards Sam. Like, when I first started watching, I thought Sam and Dean fans would be pretty evenly distributed. Are the majority of the viewers Destiel fans that hate anyone that isn’t part of their favorite imaginary couple, or is something else going on? Is Sam just unlikable to that many people?

Well. Okay. We can’t discount that Destiel is a major factor in this. You know, for one thing, a lot (and I mean a lot) of destiel content will just cut Sam out, which to be fair is not uncommon for ship content as a whole but when you’ve got such a juggernaut as destiel, it definitely affects fandom perception as a whole. That’s not even getting into how people who haven’t watched the show will then get into destiel and not supernatural, meaning the only Sam things they get are scraps from within a largely dean-and-Cas-centric narrative.

There was, probably still is, a sizable amount of people who would happily say they skipped the first three seasons to get to Cas, which is!! The first three seasons are a lot of Sam! (And of building Sam and Dean’s relationship, central to the show!) Starting in s4 launches you straight into the demon blood arc with no context of what Sam was like before or how desperate and grief-riddled he would have to be to get to this point, meaning all people see is Sam Acting Bad. And first impressions are hard to fix.

To be fair, it’s not only on destiel and it’s wider effects on how the fandom perceives… anything. (And that doesn’t just effect perception of Sam, either! It leads to distorted views of other characters, im thinking John and Benny rn, they get the worst of it.) The show itself also fails Sam. A lot. He is consistently underwritten, his agency is undermined and then that’s never addressed, and his interests are never really shown as cool and quirky like Dean’s. Dean gets episodes around his love of cowboys, Sam gets his love of true crime mentioned now and then, you see what I mean.

People will say insane shit about Sam. Like, “Sam is boring” is the least egregious take I’ve ever seen. From “Sam going to Stanford was selfish and bad” to “How Dean treats Sam is okay and normal because Sam doesn’t leave him”. It’s just. It’s very weird.

Full-disclosure, I consider myself a fan of both brothers, but I’ve got heavy Sam bias in my own ships and what I tend to reblog. So take that as you will.

(P.S. anyone else with thoughts or a different view on the fandom trends, feel free to chime in.)

#I love Dean. I just don’t see many dean takes I agree with and want to reblog. #I used to follow more dean blogs. but I stopped. because most of the time they talked about dean #they were using to insult Sam. which was! weird! didn’t like that. and also I guess liking dean for being a fucked up guy is not as popular #I mean I like that he’s messed up. I like that he uses violence as a form of love. but I guess if you want to pretend he doesn’t do that. #well. it’s a free fandom. to each their own. #I also like Sam because he’s a freak too to be clear. I like that he’s ruthless I like that he can get mean #I like the (admittedly mostly made up in my head because the spn writers uh. forgor) complex relationship he has with the devil #they’re fun characters! they have a lot of nuance! unfortunately media literacy is at an all time low! #ask #spn #Sam winchester #Dean winchester

[tchallasbabymama]

I wanted to vent here, but I can also understand if you may not want this in your inbox, so if you choose to ignore and delete, I will respect that. Your personal space and mental capacity is more important than anything else.

But I have a contribution to the series we like to call "Twitter is the cesspool of the miserable" (no seriously someone should coin something like that because as much fun as I have over there, they can be trash sometimes). Here's what happened.

For context, news had dropped that the Ironheart series is being delayed till about 2025, which is a little disappointing. This news comes after Two other black shows (Swagger and Riches, I was going to watch those eventually, I promise) were canceled. Around that time, I was reminded that a preteen show produced by Marsai Martin named Saturdays was canceled months ago. And also that we have several black-led projects that are stuck in developmental hell and if they're released, they're barely promoted.....unless they are backed by Oprah apparently because she promotes her stuff. Coupled that with every white person on FB still saying months after TLM's release that black people need their own original characters.

Compiling all of that into my annoyance, I tweeted in response to the Riri thing: "Black people should get their own original characters" The treatment of said original character: [quoted is the tweet about the the delay]. People who follow me and know that I've been trying to advocate for supporting black original characters, especially in the sci-fi/fantasy genres knew what I meant, what I was talking about, and why I was frustrated.

Somehow Members of Team Recast T'Challa found my post and were saying: "yet you were cheering Marvel on for killing off an original character". Mind you, I was already being gaslit by the "this isn't racism" crew, and then that happened. That was completely off topic and not the point of my original post. I had already asked them to stay on topic, but they still wanna argue that darn recast. So now (after I muted the post) people are arguing about whether or not T'Challa should've been recasted.

Months ago, I heard a black person say that black people have issues staying on topic, which is why we have a hard time progressing, THIS is what they meant.

So that just added to the dejection I was already feeling about us being canceled and stuck in developmental hell.

It really be our own people.

I’m sorry they’re doing all that. Unfortunately Twitter isn’t a place for nuanced conversations, it’s just a bunch of people yelling over each other.

Those two things don’t even make sense together, but alas, literacy is low.

I will say though, idk if I agree with the statement about Black folks not being able to focus hindering our progress. It’s not that it’s wrong, I just feel like even though it applies to everybody, we get unfairly labeled (a lot of times by our own people) because we’re an easy target. Meanwhile all of America is regressing thanks to a horrible education system not teaching critical thinking or basic reading comprehension AND social media making things move unnaturally quick. Idk, it just feels like even Black folks love blaming societal issues on Black folks sometimes.

#slide up in my ask box #ask cece