My thoughts on yaoi! (um, sort of)
So tonight I was bored, and I'd already written as much as my brain wanted to for the night, so I was being a creeper on the internet and reading public posts on a Dean/Castiel person's journal because a fellow Wincest- and Castiel-and-Misha-loving friend recced her to me again a few days ago. Anyway, so I was reading this person's episode reactions and whatnot, which included lots of flail and pointing out of subtext (as you do), and I realized something important.
We should all just take a chill pill and stop fighting over our ships because it's really all the same process anyway.
I mean, I've been around in various fandoms for a WHILE and was in HP, a fandom of Epic Years-Long Shipping Wars That Probably Still Haven't Ended, so this is not exactly NEWS to me, but it was kind of cool to have it hit me over the head again in, like, this burst of clarity. XD We may take different things away from the text--in MBV, for example, I might hold up Dean asking Sam to be his valentine as something that fills my shippy heart with glee, while you might flail about Castiel's lack of personal space with Dean in that same scene, or we might interpret the same moment differently or WHATEVER--but the WAYS we interact with the text are, very often, THE SAME WAYS. Your Castiel-is-staring-at Dean's-crotch-omg screencap is equivalent to my Dean-is-staring-at-Sam's-ass-omg, and all that.
And, I mean, do I take issue with some aspects of Dean/Castiel? I won't enumerate on why I do not ship it here, but YES. But I certainly don't begrudge it existing, and on occasion, I can even kind of see where they're coming from with regards to the text. Plus, I am SURE that a lot of the people who ship that take issue with aspects of Sam/Dean, so there you go. It kind of gets to a point where fighting over incest versus angelporn, or whatever else people are defriending each other over these days, becomes irrelevant in a way because, really? We are FANGIRLS. None of us really have the moral high ground here, especially when those are your options, you know?
Obviously, I am talking here about two specific ships in a fandom with multiple ships and lots of people who don't ship anything at all, but you (hopefully) get my point. It all comes down to what you like and what makes you happy about interacting in fandom, and your hopes to find other people who feel the same way about what makes THEM happy, AND YEAH. La la la, basically, I am not saying anything new here and think we should just all love each other and live in a gigantic hippie commune together. :D
We should all just take a chill pill and stop fighting over our ships because it's really all the same process anyway.
I mean, I've been around in various fandoms for a WHILE and was in HP, a fandom of Epic Years-Long Shipping Wars That Probably Still Haven't Ended, so this is not exactly NEWS to me, but it was kind of cool to have it hit me over the head again in, like, this burst of clarity. XD We may take different things away from the text--in MBV, for example, I might hold up Dean asking Sam to be his valentine as something that fills my shippy heart with glee, while you might flail about Castiel's lack of personal space with Dean in that same scene, or we might interpret the same moment differently or WHATEVER--but the WAYS we interact with the text are, very often, THE SAME WAYS. Your Castiel-is-staring-at Dean's-crotch-omg screencap is equivalent to my Dean-is-staring-at-Sam's-ass-omg, and all that.
And, I mean, do I take issue with some aspects of Dean/Castiel? I won't enumerate on why I do not ship it here, but YES. But I certainly don't begrudge it existing, and on occasion, I can even kind of see where they're coming from with regards to the text. Plus, I am SURE that a lot of the people who ship that take issue with aspects of Sam/Dean, so there you go. It kind of gets to a point where fighting over incest versus angelporn, or whatever else people are defriending each other over these days, becomes irrelevant in a way because, really? We are FANGIRLS. None of us really have the moral high ground here, especially when those are your options, you know?
Obviously, I am talking here about two specific ships in a fandom with multiple ships and lots of people who don't ship anything at all, but you (hopefully) get my point. It all comes down to what you like and what makes you happy about interacting in fandom, and your hopes to find other people who feel the same way about what makes THEM happy, AND YEAH. La la la, basically, I am not saying anything new here and think we should just all love each other and live in a gigantic hippie commune together. :D