Choose one – unpopular opinion about ships or shippers?

Sometime shippers need to just shhhhh a little bit. 

One of my biggest pet peeves is when shippers like to pretend that their ships are objectively better by some constantly changing standard. It’s obnoxious. Canon-ness doesn’t make something better. The absence of “problematic” stuff doesn’t make something better. The gender, race, or sexual orientation of the characters involved does not make something better. Of course you can like one ship and despise another for your own reasons, but that’s all subjective stuff. 

I kind of really hate the thread of “my ship is better than your ship because yours is *bad* and mine is *good*” because it’s so subjective. If you gave me any ship I could probably come up with at least five reasons it’s “””problematic””” by tumblr standards. It’s really not that hard. (Actually that might be a fun game.) But it’s all subjective and ridiculous when the very nature of fandom is to be transformative. It’s kind of like going up to a painter and being like “this canvas is blank therefore you’re a terrible artist. no, you can’t just paint over it and make something new the canvas was blank originally! and you use too much blue!” 

Also, I do get that shippers love talking about their ships, (I know, I do it myself a whole buttload) but sometimes you just wanna… talk about things without having to also talk about the ships involved. I get that this is a social media and people can and will talk about whatever the hell they want, when they want to, but it can get a little irritating at times. Of course, I realize that the only person I can control is myself so when I get annoyed I just walk away. It’s not worth it to upset other people who are just having fun. I’ll make my own post (with blackjack and hookers) instead. 

Unpopular Opinions!

@casbakespie replied to your post “��(thoughts on different Supernatural seasons/storylines if you want a…”

can’t say i disagree about some of this… especially the michael dean. i’m interested to see where that goes, but i agree it didn’t feel like they adequately laid the groundwork for dean’s decision (though honestly i felt the same way about dean killing death or whatever a few seasons ago). all the meta writers were talking about it throughout the season, but i still didn’t really see the “hints”… how would a casual viewer feel about the finale if they don’t have (1)

the benefit of reading the meta writers who predict and harp on why/how/whatever of dean saying yes weeks before hand? (2/2)

I think about this, too. In some respects, it’s an easy prediction to make because as soon as they showed Michael and his wasteland world you could probably guess he wanted out. But at the same time I really hate things that are “shocking twists” just for the sake of shocking twists. In my opinion, meta should be a supplement. It should be there so you can get a better understanding of references that were made or how themes were laid out or things you might’ve missed. You should’ve have to rely on it to understand where the story is going or make a guess as to what’s ahead. I don’t know how casual viewers feel about the season 13 finale, but my inclination is that it probably felt like it was out of nowhere. 

And I totally agree with you on the killing Death thing. The didn’t do very well with building up Dean’s loss of control imo. If they did that better, summoning Death and killing him would’ve made more sense. 

🔥(thoughts on different Supernatural seasons/storylines if you want a prompt for saltiness! Otherwise just go where the salt takes you ;D)

I don’t like the Dabb era. I just really, really don’t. I don’t see why so many people in a certain circle seem to think he’s some kind of genius when he drops plot threads all the time and bumbles his way through the B-plot and saves all the ammo for the end. Like… it’s just freaking lazy imo. Michael and Dean should’ve met waaay earlier in the season for the finale to have any impact. Yeah, we’re getting something we were kinda introduced to seasons ago, but there should have been more build up to Dean actually saying yes instead of it just happening right at the end. Jack’s storyline just kinda… fell apart. I get they wanted to go with a nature v nurture thing but they didn’t have the juevos to do it so Jack stayed pretty static and that was… meh. Don’t get me wrong, I like Jack, but he stayed a cuddly little baby and hasn’t grown. I wanna see him grow. Asmodeus was a total failure as a plot. He did nothing interesting and the poor actor got stuck chewing scenery the whole time. And all this doesn’t even touch the fact that they whole BMoL thing is still, technically, unresolved because congrats they got driven out of the country but they still exist and are still doing exactly the same thing they had been. Has saving the world become “saving the world only if it’s in America because anything else is hard and we don’t have the frequent flier miles”? 

So yeah. Not a fan of Dabb era. 

Unpopular Opinions

🔥 how about an opinion about fanfic?

Fanfic is held to a ridiculous standard most of the time and it’s annoying as hell. The scope of influence that fanfic actually holds isn’t very big (because not only is it limited to the fandom it’s in, it’s also limited to the sub-fandom of the ship and the people who’ve willingly read it). Anyone who’ve busted their butts on a fic only to get less than a five hundred hits can tell you it’s a pretty niche market. But the constraints that some people would have you put on fanfic because of it’s perceived potential to ruin everything that’s good in the world wind up killing creativity and fucking with peoples heads. As fanfic writers we’re supposed to be “better” than the media we’re borrowing from which sometimes means there’s a pressure to “clean it up”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen “well as long as it’s not romanticized” thrown at certain darker themes to which I go “yeah, I’m assuming that if you’ve clicked on my extensively tagged work you’re a grown up who doesn’t want to be moralized to”. I’m not here to read happy stories about happy people who have vanilla sex in their affordable apartments. I’m here to read about people who fight and get pissed and have issues with themselves and each other, who struggle but find happiness (or don’t) and grow and change. I’m here for pain and progress. And sometimes I’m here just to watch everything burn. 

I think it’s fair to criticize certain trends or patterns in fic and to get upset about them, but ultimately if you’re not doing anything to try to counterbalance that by actually making what you want to see (and not by yelling at strangers on the internet) it’s just hot air. Be the change you want to see in the world, you know? Don’t like that your faves get sidelined? Write your faves in important roles. Don’t like that one trope? Write a different trope. 

But I just personally think it’s almost laughable that fanfic is seen by some as this paragon of writing where we can “do it better” than the media in question by eliminating conflict and darker topics all together. It’s not going to cause a complete social collapse if I write my fucked-up foursome serial killer fic and we’re not going to be heralded into a new age of enlightenment if someone else writes their coffee shop AU where Character A is a firefighter and Character B volunteers at an animal shelter and their only conflict is they’re both too shy to make a move. “Doing it better” so often just leads to boring ass fic. 

Unpopular Opinions!

I was browsing my “mr ketch” tag to try to find a quote I *know* I said last year about how when I write bad guys I’m writing to myself but now I can’t find it. I’m gonna have to make that quote again, I guess. :/

The good news is that no, I actually haven’t changed that much. I have a distinct pattern of picking *that bad guy* with the mysterious and vague backstory and the laundry list of certified bad deeds and going “this is the one I’ve chosen to love”.