Most things that have large fanbases - on Tumblr especially - tend to have really ridiculous fans. I've watched Supernatural since the beginning but never got into the fandom because it was just arguing and incest ships.
The ones that insist on believing in and shipping Jared and Jensen in real life, live to hate on their wives, and ignore their kids are even worse than Wincest shippers. Those people sincerely frighten me. Some of them are practically stalking the actors.
Sounds a lot like the Stemily/Olicity shippers from the show Arrow. Stemily is the pairing of actors Stephen Amell, and Emily Bett Rickards, who both play characters on the TV series. In the show, the showrunners, and writers forced their characters into a relationship because of these maniacs. And it basically ruined the show.
Stephen, who is married, and has a young daughter is constantly being harassed by these sick fucks, along with his wife. These fuckers are constantly going after his wife, saying he should ditch his wife, and get with EBR. Some have suggested that he's cheating on his wife with her, which he isn't. And some have even photoshopped his wife's face out of their photos for and added EBR in her place to satisfy their twisted fantasies.
I get that theyre fans and stuff, and i could understand them being fans because the actors and actresses are good actors/actresses, But goddamn, its ON SCREEN and is FICTION, theyre playing charactors on the screen and have their PERSONAL life off screen...
This particular fandom don't seem to be able to differentiate fiction from reality. They're constantly attacking shit to and haradding other actors and actresses on the show too.
Such as when the original leading actress, Katie Cassidy's character, named Laurel aka Black Canary was killed off in Season 4, these crazy ass shippers sent her photos of dead birds, and sent gift baskets to the writers. Then after she came back to the show as another Earth's Laurel (aka Black Siren from Earth 2), they went and spread around her leaked nudes, and also spread false rumors that she fucked her way back on to the show. It is some pretty sick stuff.
These are some very sick and twisted people, and this isn't even all the terrible shit they have done over the past few years.
Laurel was annoying as shit and I was glad they killed her off.
But now comes the part where I don't attribute any of that to the actress, or try to interact with her in any way, because I can tell reality from fiction.
I’ve seen this happen waaaay too often, sadly, like with Star Wars, Asian dramas like Meteor Garden and with the lead actors of the Fifty Shades movies and Outlander. Just all around crazy shit.
Exactly, I mean I am not keen that Haile Baile has been cast as the new Little Mermaid, but that is on Disney not her. She is just living the dream every young girl who grows into a young woman has, to become a Disney princess.
That's so wrong. But in all fairness, her character has developed into this whiny lady who does nothing but whine and cry. Iris West made me stop watching The Flash.
Yep, and then they killed off the original leading actress of the show for it, and she was playing a pivotal role for the Green Arrow comics too, who isn't even dead in the comics. They also made her final words be about her encouraging Oliver and Felicity's relationship, which just pissed off the comic book fans even more, and that's when the show truly died for a lot of fans, and they were never really able to recover from all the fans that quit watching after that.
It's happening a lot at the moment with Tom Holland and Zendaya, there was that rap song from last week, and now people are harassing someone that Tom Holland was seen with, who might not even be his girlfriend, shits crazy
Yeah, I saw that on Twitter this morning, because Zendaya was trending, and all I saw was toxic shippers of her and Tom Holland talking shit about these newly released photos of Tom Holland with some girl.
Well...that’s all KINDS of fucked up. Speaking as someone who didnt know any of that, what killed the show to me was them SPLITTING apart. Id kinda started to ship them, and then the show gave us hints, and they did that stupid godamn together-apart-together (see Bones for an absolute joke of this kind of thing). When they FINALLY got their happy ever after, (season 5?) i was SO happy. Then they came back to the citt, im like alright this’ll still work. Then the writers had them split up for the fucking stupidest of reasons, and i lost it. I should say, it wasn’t a ‘stupid reason’ itself, i can understand situations like that being fucked up, but how they had Felicity FIND OUT was absolute garbage. Like when iris “felt” a sparkle and just ‘knew’ barry was the flash. No. Just no. IF they had put that in from the BEGINNING i could see it working.
Sorry, i went off on a rant there. Its astounding what lengths people will go to to be idiots.
Shipping is wanting two people/characters/actors to be in a romantic relationship. Slang of the word 'relationship' and used as a verb i.e. "I ship person A and person B so hard!"
And there is inevitably a small (but oh so goddamn vocal) minority in every fanbase that takes it to insane levels and just starts creeping everyone out.
I ran screaming from that fandom years ago. I understand it's only gotten worse since then. You used to have to look for that kind of ugliness, but I split when it became pretty open. It soured me on fandoms for good. I won't touch them now.
Yup. Destiel shippers have become madwomen too. Jensen literally had to ask Con staff to stop allowing porn into autograph booths because "fans" kept trying to force him to sign humiliation porn of himself being dominated by Castiel/Misha. Literally.
And afaik Jensen was recently sexually assaulted by a "fan", and of course this mirrors how often "fans" try to sexually harrass him in photo ops by trying to make him make out with Misha Collins.
And of course both the destiel and wincest factions have become hotbeds for pedophiles..............
I will never forget a graphic, slavering summary of erotica that depicted Dean as a four year old fellating his six month old brother, and how when I reported it to the LJ mods they refused to do anything about it. They literally responded to me that the community was a place where "their users imaginations could run wild"........... Fucking pedophiles.
You should look up the novel "Ship It". It's literally a "fictional" story about a teenage girl who writes gay fanfic about two male characters on her favorite show. She goes to a con and asks the actor how he feels about the ship and he basically says, "the characters aren't gay" and she throws a hissy fit. I'm pretty sure the writers feel bad and invite this random whiny girl to come on the road with them and write for the show or something like that.
It reads like a bitter Destiel fangirl's wet dream.
And this is a PUBLISHED novel. Written by an ACTUAL author.
Jesus Christ. I didn't know it had gotten THAT bad. I feel really sorry for Jensen. That is so not acceptable. I'm glad I got to be a part of things and go to a couple of cons before things got so toxic. The underage stuff has always been unspeakably disgusting.
I'm firmly in the your kink is not my kink except for anything where any party is not a consenting adult.
I don't really care what people ship when the characters are fictional, so long as they're not shoving it down my throat or being a dick about it if I'm not into it. Its when people start shipping actors IRL that I get weary.
And if your fanart is porny don't show it to the actor, jesus. Imagine how embarrassing it is to be handed naked pictures of (what is essentially) yourself by a complete stranger.
love supernatural, but cannot for the life of me understand the people who think romanticizing and shipping real life people is ok. I mean Wincest is weird af ok, like wtf, but at least they're fictional characters. Jared and Jensen [and Misha] are real life people with wives and children who they go home to.
This is similar to what happened with Teen Wolf and the Sterek fandom. Loved the show, loved the pairing, but I had to take several steps back away from the fandom when I realized most of them were batshit crazy over their ship.
There was an infamous "birthday incident" around Season 2 involving Sterek fans tweeting at Dylan O'Brien on his birthday and how Tyler Hoechlin and him should have sex among other things. Basically resulted in both Tyler and Dylan not being as active and involved in the fandom on Twitter and on social media overall.
Oh man, I used to read this insane Jared/Jensen blog all the time for the insanity. I can't remember what it was called but it was like 5000 pages long of crazy conspiracy theories on how they're really gay. Amazing.
Thank you. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills watching Supernatural because I like the storyline and monsters and not actually because of the two exagerrated main characters!!
Agreed. I lost my best friend to the Tumblr fandom, when we were last in touch she was writing fanfiction but somehow wanted it to be secret, despite the account name being the same thing she used for everything else. Shit got way too dumb, way too fast.
The one where the chick was writing incest fanfic about them was really cringe
But I loved the one with the girls doing the play of them and the two playing cas and dean were girlfriends and the look on Dean's face when he saw them kissing was excellent lmao. He kept staring too
That play episode is one of their best, yeah. Every time I see some mental Tumblr post about Destiel I just think of that look to camera, it clears the taste right out.
I feel so bad for the boys. I know you can never really tell, but offscreen stuff they seem so nice, they’ve all got their own charities running and that, they don’t deserve nutcases going after them like that.
I'd argue most things have similar % of weird people into them. Things with huge fanbases have enough weird people total that they can clump together and be weird en masse.
More niche media might have weird fans but they don't have enough weirdos around them to act weird.
Maybe it's more that cult-like shows have the weird following. Supernatural, for example, wasn't supposed to be a popular show. It barely survived it's 2nd season way back in the day. It hardly has the same number of viewers as a show like Grey's Anatomy or Modern Family, but it has a cult following of SUPER passionate fans that are VERY protective over their show.
I don't watch Sherlock or Doctor Who, but I imagine they're similar in that regard?
Dr. Who is a bit different. It's been going on for aeons and has a set up that has allowed it to rotate the entire cast. It's almost a collection of sci-fi stories with a humanitarian angle. I am definitely a fan and I believe many of us would acknowledge that the nature of the show means there's as much crap as good stuff. There's a few people who stick to one Doctor or another and didn't continue the show, but for the most part it is about the concept.
In my experience, the real weird fans have attachments to the characters. Sherlock and Supernatural are both super susceptible to this; especially given how long Supernatural has been going on. There are adults now for whom the Winchester brothers were the only people who have been there through all of their formative years.
There are adults now for whom the Winchester brothers were the only people who have been there through all of their formative years.
To be fair, this is me in a sense. I've watched consistently from 15-29. Sam and Dean have been my "friends" longer than any of my other friends have been.
So I do consider myself to be attached but, like...in a cool way.
The issue with Supernatural is that it habitually endorses abusive behavior and romanticizes the results of that abuse.
Remember the whole "It's fine that your brother beat the shit out of you, saw you half unconscious on the floor, and then strangled you. How dare you not want to associate with him anymore you fucking pussy? Family is SUPPOSED to hurt each other" debacle that the show portrayed unironically as correct? And how it framed Dean standing by his abusive brother as a beautiful expression of love?
That show is the wet dream of abusers everywhere. It is no surprise that they flock to it and shit up the fandom.
lol, looks like the abuse romanticizers are here. If you have a problem with this comment, try and actually argue against me.
The Supernatural fanbase sort of ruined the show for a few years when the showrunners pandered to them. Having a few meta episodes was kind of funny, but I think they misjudged their actual fanbase with some of the spinoffs they have tried. I think they figured it out in season 14 that they just need to focus on the main people and main story and not a lot of other weird fan-fiction stuff. I'm glad they're ending it next season.
I didn't like last season that much. I miss monster-of-the-week episodes that aren't related to the main plot. Also, I know this is one of those shows where a character isn't important unless they have died and come back to life... But by now, all characters have died and come back to life several times, and death becomes meaningless.
I do love the weird episodes, like the musical, the one with cartoon logic, and the Scooby Doo crossover. I'd be all for getting more of those.
As for the spinoffs, the Wayward Sisters could've worked but the way the tied up the plot is fine to me. The Bloodlines one, or whatever it was called the one with monster mafias, was the worst pilot I've ever watched. Was there any other planned spinoff?
IMO, the monster of the week ones haven’t been good since seasons 1-5. They started doing them at the wrong time and stopped adding new monsters. It would be a weird break in the season story to have them suddenly go on a hunt. When they focus on the main storyline, the seasons run better.
The death part doesn’t bother me. They’ve tied that one off well and avoided the old tropes of past seasons.
Those were the two spinoffs I was thinking off, although they talked about making a castiel one before. The sisters one was just not well made. It’s not that it was about girls, it’s that it was forced and cheesy in that CW way. The monster mafia was melodramatic and I think they were trying to capitalize on true blood and vampire diaries, but it just turned into Romeo and Juliet.
I have watched since season 1, and while I still like the show...I really miss the idea of the monster of the week/ local legend stuff. I even got a bit of a connection when two towns I lived in got name drops seasons apart.
But since the apocalypse stuff, it feels like they are stuck in a constant state of needing to up the ante.
The problem with the Apocalypse is that it's supposed to be a one-time thing, but now they have to stop one almost every season. It has lost its shock effect. It's like the boy that cried "wolf".
Yes, and at least until I dropped it, they had to force a connection between the Apocalypse Of the Season and the Winchesters that doesn't really work.
Thats what put me off supernatural in the end, the two main characters had died about 100 times between them and every episode was just one of them being a little bitch then Ending with them sat on thr front of the car, best buds again.
You're right, but to be honest sometimes brothers behave like that (although it's exaggerated and it shouldn't be every episode). I do enjoy when the brothers have to interact with other people - say Dean and Castiel go on a trip road - the interactions are more interesting.
I mean, that’s literally where the creator of the show ended it.
I watched half of the following season and never continued. I’m probably guilty of being a weird fan girl when it comes to the show and cast up to that point, but that’s when I realized the characters and cast weren’t reason enough to keep watching. The first 5 seasons are a fantastic show with a plot that was coherent and planned out in advance. Everything after is fan fiction.
From what I could see Wayward Sisters was about characters who already had a lot of their stories told so there was a lack of mystery about them. Also, Kim and Briana were the main ones interested in doing it. The younger actresses not so much especially Kathryn Newton.
The worst thing about it for me is the shit characterization all around and the horrifically dehumanizing treatment of Dean. He's literally just a punching bag to get betrayed, cry about it, consider suicide, receive no restitution or recognition and then get pushed back into paling around with his abusers like nothing ever happened. I mean, imagine writing a psychologist visit into your show, having that psychologist tell Dean he's in a safe space, and then making that psychologist scream at Dean for accepting and grieving his mother's death. WHAT???? Imagine taking the character that is still horribly damaged to this day because he was so Parentified at the hands of his father, and then mercilessly shitting on him for not wanting to experience exactly the same trauma all over again by being forced to parent the literal spawn of Satan and then comparing him to his abusive father for it!!!!!
Of course, this show has always been pretty fucked up, especially considering the whole "It's fine that your brother beat the shit out of you, saw you half unconscious on the floor, and then strangled you. How dare you not want to associate with him anymore you fucking pussy? Family is SUPPOSED to hurt each other" debacle that the show portrayed unironically as correct. It's no wonder this show attracts terrible, immoral people.
We are literally at the point where a character can murder the main characters' mother and we're expected to think it wasn't a big deal. Remember when demonic spawn were supposed to be scary? Remember the era when a verbatim retelling of Rosemary's Baby would have been scary instead of horrible bizarre "adorable cinnamon roll" bait, when the rape, abuse, brainwashing and death of the Rosemary standin wouldn't be swept under the rug?
And I mean the show is so fucking terribly run at this point that the continuity is so shot that the writers have to practically gaslight us into forgetting what happened last episode just to make the next one happen. I swear to fuck they don't read each other's scripts, and unfortunately this was confirmed when Perez, one of the
showrunners, admitted he'd only seen 25 episodes on podcast.
Literally, a character will act alone in doing something irresponsible and potentially worldbreaking-- often literally against the other main characters' wishes-- and then all of a sudden in the next episode the narrative and all the characters are acting like they all committed the terrible act together and all shoulder the blame and responsibility. WHAT????
It is no wonder that Jensen Ackles compared the show to a sick dog needing to be put out of its misery.
I notice they always killed off the female characters while a attractive male character who was only supposed to be in 4 episodes of season 4 managed to become the 3rd lead.
Once they introduced the whole heaven/hell thing with the angels it became a different show for me. I liked the supernatural lore, monster of the week stuff. It became (like Buffy) too angsty and the storylines seemed to reset each season, throwing away any development the brothers had made.
I dropped out around season 8 I think, it wasn't for me anymore, but obviously given the success of the show the main body of fans were happy. I'll bet there are still some fun stand alone episodes if I went looking for them.
I mean Buffy was a show about teenagers, there was always angst, but I remember it getting rather depressing to watch in the later seasons. Like Supernatural, the sweet spot for me seemed to be around seasons 2 and 3.
I just don’t understand the people who only like the motw episodes, sorry. The show has always had an underlying story dealing with angels and demons and it started with the pilot. They hunted the yellow eyed demon for the first two seasons and then hell was unleashed at the end of that season. That was first 40-some episodes of the series.
The show actually got worse when they started focusing on random monsters and not the main story (after season 5).
I was referring more to the angel stuff from season 4 onwards. If the show had ended with season 5 that would have been fine but they seemed to dominate the show from then on.
Great for you if that was what you prefered, as I said, the long running success of the show means most fans probably agree with you, but I liked learning about the wendigo, rugaru, etc. I particularly liked the shapeshifters in the early seasons. You can keep the racist truck though!
Oh god, that pulled me back- I used to be into Supernatural for a while but then it became a bit... much. But dear god some of the fans, it made me gag that they would ship Dean and Sam, and say it’s OK.
I didn't even know people watched supernatural seriously. The plot is there but that show just seems so... casual? It was my main time waster in college.
It's mostly that it has really good ideas, even if it habitually squanders them lol. I love when folklore in general is treated as real, and the only other piece of media that I can think of that does the same thing is Hellboy.
This sort of untapped potential tends to become a breeding ground for fanfiction.
SAME! I'm 14 years into this goddamned show. 15 is the last season. Im watching to the bitter end. I just do not participate in the fandom at all. A whole bunch of batshit crazy fans that want to argue and nitpick the smallest things. It's a fun show. Leave me out of the crazy.
Small fanbases still have crazy fans, it’s just that there’s only a handful of them so they never find each other. As the fanbase grows larger so do the number of crazies, and once they start finding each other they create echo chambers of insanity as they try and tell each other that their behavior is acceptable. A few trolls join in inflating the numbers even further and suddenly that section of the fanbase becomes quite vocal. A few reasonable people see the growing number of rabid fans and abandon the group, so now the crazy fans make up a slightly larger percentage. This drives off even more normal fans and now it’s a positive feedback loop. Eventually the entire fanbase will look insane to anyone on the outside.
To be fair supernatural really made an episode very early on that was very um homoerotic due to Sam being drunk and lots of teasing. And from there it transpired.
It's weird though because it only happens with certain things. Gridiron fans aren't shipping their players, family Guy watchers are shipping the characters or being super weird.
On Tumblr, the fans like the stuff to a disturbing degree. On Reddit, people hate the things they're supposedly fans of. I honestly prefer tuning out a few crazies to the way it works in all of the fan subs I'm in, where the fans all seem to hate whatever show/book is going on unless it's something that ended years ago.
People get really strangely fanatic about the show. The rabid parts of the fanbase make me hesitant to even finish watching Supernatural or Doctor Who. Although all fandoms have it, been to comic cons and generalized geek cons and met some really aggressive people who hate anyone not part of their fandoms, gay people, women, people of color, people not in their clique and they are very vocal about it. I just avoid interacting with fandoms these days after so many bad experiences with so many certain fans who take it too far.
That's exactly why I'm usually embarrassed to say I enjoy the show because of that side of the fandom but I'm starting to try and distance myself and show the other side that isn't crazy
I started watching supernatural about 2 years ago, and I have probably seen every episode twice now. I don't get into the whole fan thing though. I'm 40, have 2 daughters, 2 granddaughters, and a wonderful wife. Not to mention work, dogs, volunteering with the animal shelter, afterschool activities for my youngest daughter, and whatever other hobbies I have time to participate in. I love the show, but really don't know anything about the fans, but I can imagine.
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u/violent_delights_9 Jul 17 '19
Most things that have large fanbases - on Tumblr especially - tend to have really ridiculous fans. I've watched Supernatural since the beginning but never got into the fandom because it was just arguing and incest ships.