I’m not sure where I have and have not mentioned this, but during… a debate with someone (although I may be mischaracterizing that in that, toward the end, I repeatedly asked them to stop contacting me, and they only did so when I blocked them after they fraudulently reported my [old] Twitter account to Twitter for self-harm and suicidal content, causing Twitter to have to verify that there was none), they threatened to contact my minor children without my permission and send them what they made clear enough was explicit Supernatural fanfiction. All of this — them continuing to Tweet me after I had by that point repeatedly asked them to stop, the actual Tweets itself that I just referenced — initially “did not violate Twitter’s Terms of Service” in spite of the fact that multiple people reported the Tweets where they told me that they wanted to contact my minor children without my permission and… yeah. I literally don’t feel like typing it all out again.

So I began Tweeting to Twitter support (Support?), rife with a screenshot of the events as they had occurred, even if in the screenshot their Twitter handle was not visible since I did not want people to potentially go vigilante on them. I asked them if they were condoning the fact that someone threatened to contact my minor children without my consent and send them explicit content. I asked more than once. I Tweeted it to Jack for the sake of doing so, and I Tweeted their Twitter Spaces account when Twitter Support included them in a Tweet. Only after all of that, it seemed, did Twitter take action on the account in question, suspending it. And I could tell that the action in question was manual, because I got automated e-mails from Twitter initially stating that no reported Tweet violated the Terms of Service, and then all of a sudden this person’s account is suspended. I can’t say that I feel bad that this person’s account got suspended. I don’t.

The moment you drag someone’s personal life into it, particularly family members of theirs, is when you lose.

For the sake of preserving mental clarity in all of my readers, I am not and will not share pictures actively taken from the finale episode itself. This is a behind the scenes picture that was taken that I liked a whole lot.

So many people still complain about how triggering Supernatural‘s finale was for some people, claiming that The CW “shouldn’t have been responsible for their mental health”, that they “should have known better before watching it, especially because it’s Supernatural” and an assortment of other things that almost a year later aggravate me to this day. Without going into extraneous detail to respect the mental health issues that fans of Supernatural and my readers may have, I’d like to say a few things about that, which I’ll get into.

First of all, I absolutely think that the rating of the show should have been raised for the finale alone and quite possibly the episode titled “Despair”. As it stands right now, Supernatural is TV-14, meaning that anyone fourteen years of age or older can freely and legally watch it… and if adults were so triggered by the events that occurred in the finale, one can only imagine how distressing and triggering this might have been (or in some cases, must have been) to the teenagers that happened to be tuning in. Being as vague as possible for the sake of this post, this involved a major character death in a particularly… bad way, and I don’t think that people should have been allowed to just walk into that with no warning. I think it was wrong of The CW to provide no warning that… the events I’m describing actually happened on air. If you’re going to make this to where teenagers can watch this, you need to be more responsible. End of. Except not…

My second point: Jared Padalecki has made bank off of his “Always Keep Fighting” campaign in honor of spreading awareness about depression and erasing the stigma, so to say that “people should have known better before watching this” is erroneous because Supernatural is known to have viewers who are mentally ill, which is made up of the bread and butter of mental illness (hence Jared’s campaign), and that spreading awareness of this campaign via the various items that he sells or that are sold on his behalf are helping Jared make bank. It’s incredibly hypocritical to say that “people should have known better before watching this since it’s Supernatural” given Jared’s investment in spreading awareness about depression as it directly relates to the show itself. I mean, the phrase “always keep fighting” was intentionally dropped in the finale.

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t watched The CW since this aired. I have a lot of other, better things to do.

But as we stand as a society, we need to do less gatekeeping of those with mental illness from things that they would enjoy in the appropriate capacities, giving warnings when necessary and raising ratings when necessary. It’s the least we can do. We shouldn’t leave those with mental illness to “fend for themselves”.

Some of you may think that for ethical, legal, and moral reasons, shipping Sam Winchester with his brother is… yeah. (And to be fair, that is a rational response. I am not going to try to take that away from anyone.)

But it gets… worse.

As much as I try not to judge people for their pairings, what they do, and how they think of and about fandom, this is where I draw the line as someone who does not ship either of these things — on a personal level, like, please do not talk to me about either of these things, but especially do not talk to me about the last one if that makes any sense. This is the one thing in this fandom that I can not stand hearing about…

There is what is called weec*st, and I am censoring it for a reason.

It involves shipping Sam and Dean Winchester when they are at varying ages below the age of consent.

Sometimes markedly below.

Some of the most vocal w*ncest shippers are also unashamed shippers of this ship as well, and they are quite vocal about it. Therein lies the actual problem, too. Hellers (people who ship Castiel and Dean Winchester who have reclaimed use of the term “Destiheller”, shortening it) are nowhere near as vocal about their preferred ship even though they may share things related to it on various social media sites. They just don’t get in your face demanding that you prefer it, or even give it the time of day. Most of the Hellers that I have encountered abide by the “live and let live” philosophy, which I can’t say that I don’t agree with.

I just can’t help but wish that this particular part of the fandom weren’t so vocal and as in your face about it.

If you seriously have to ask “is *ncest legal in my state or country” though, that’s where the problems start.

One of my posts reminded me that I wanted to address a few more of the most prevalent, popular ships in the Supernatural fandom. (I’ve made it clear enough that I am an enthusiastic shipper of Castiel and Dean Winchester, also known as Deancas or Destiel, and self-identify as a Heller, which used to be a derogatory term for those who ship this pairing until they reclaimed it.) I’ve made some mention to those who ship w*ncest — Sam and Dean Winchester, brothers — and focus on how those who ship this… interact with those on social media, almost always to their detriment though they don’t seem to care how they come off.

Not minding how this is a “dark pairing” (usually relegated to corners of the web where those who also ship this pairing can more freely discuss it, not in the open) and not getting into the ethical, legal, and moral implications of this pairing — some of them have actually asked which of the United States incest is legal in for the… sake of this pairing, and that’s all I am going to say about that particular quote, I swear — those who ship w*ncest now seem to be more “in your face” about it than those who ship dark pairings usually are, proud of their pairing, flaunting it on social media… particularly in their Twitter bios. During an engagement with someone who ships w*ncest, they actually told me that they wanted to DM (direct message) my children and recommend rated w*ncest fanfic to them. This is not something that you say to someone under normal circumstances. Or at all, really. First of all, I limit how my children use the Internet — I don’t allow them to have social media accounts of their own, especially on sites that require the use of their legal names. One of my sons is old enough to use Facebook (writing that makes me feel a bit old, but anyway). Truth be told, neither of them are interested in social media at all and are more than content being allowed to use YouTube and YouTube Kids with me monitoring the videos that they watch on those apps.

That brings me right around to another point, though — w*ncest shippers have, at least in the past, gloated about how they’ve told their children about this pairing and tried to get them “in on it”. Not minding the ethical, legal, and moral implications of this again, what I do in the fandoms that I am involved in is my business, and my business it will stay. I haven’t gotten either one of my kids “into” Supernatural, even though one of them has watched a few episodes with me and ardently flips through my copy of the crew picture book. I don’t feel like I will ever share “that part of my life” with my kids, namely because it is not relevant to them at all. I’m not going to make them like Supernatural just because I like it. If they ever want to join a fandom of their own, I suppose we’ll talk about it, but at the ages they are right now and the stages of their lives they’re in, they don’t seem interested in that sort of thing, and their lack of interest doesn’t bother me.

Basically, a lot of w*ncest shippers are in your face about how superior they feel their pairing is to other pairings in the Supernatural universe, and they need to respect people in general — especially those who do not feel the same way as them — and be not… nearly in your face as they tend to get. That would be nice.

This is also going to be the first part of a two-part entry since this has gotten kind of long at this point, heh.