I watched The Winchesters trailer and was amused by portions of it, to include Carlos hitting the demon with the van in the manner that they did (“love tapped”, “double tapped”, “[…] the Scooby van”), and found that I liked their character a lot, but don’t feel like that — or even seeing Dean Winchester again, which was refreshing — was enough to get me to want to watch. I have friends who are interested in it, who are excited for it, who want to watch it, and I’m happy for them. But I intend on remaining extricated from what I like to call “active fandom” due to comments like this, something that I encountered because I’d seen people copy and paste it into their own Tweets responding to it, something that just floored me for a few minutes:

you can do whatever you want with ugly long haired dean but he will always be hanging off a rebar in akron ohio in the end

Things like these are literally why I had no fun in fandom when I considered myself an “active member” of it. I casually participated in GISH one year, and even that was too much for me — I felt like the expectations were more than I was able to meet, and I’m certain that I fell short in the eyes of my fellow group members. Although I love the idea of it, GISH was astronomically bad for my anxiety, and I know for a fact that I won’t be participating in it again. I frequently felt like I had to (and was) over-extend myself when there were days, and even weeks, when I wanted to walk away from the thing that people wanted to have hours-long discussions on — although I respected, and continue to respect, their interest in it, I was bad at feigning that same depth of interest on my own. I haven’t read a single fanfic in more than three months, and I haven’t rewatched a single episode of Supernatural, which used to be the fandom that I was the most invested in. It just hasn’t been something that I’ve gravitated toward or wanted to do. I also watched the trailer for The Winchesters only one single time. “Carry on, my wayward son… there’ll be peace when you are done…”