#being a fan of color is too fraught to let your guard down

[naranjapetrificada]

I just wanted to comment on seeing a favorite author suddenly write something that feels way out of left field. I'm from SPN fandom. I've seen Destiel writers who write them beautifully and understand every facet of the canon and characters perfectly turn around and write graphic Wincest. Some of these authors do this to, in their words, challenge themselves to write something so against canon just as well as their main pairing. Some others do so just because the actors are hot, even though it'd never be canon and squicks a lot of people out.

There's the very rare author who does this because they actually ship Wincestiel and started with just Destiel in order to ease readers into the Wincest side of it. I have even seen an untagged graphic incestous sex scene in the middle of otherwise wholly Destiel-centered fanfic. I've lost a formerly favorite author that way and haven't been able to touch even their works in other fandoms because of it.

Basically what my rambling boils down to is that I get how it feels to see something like that out of the blue from a favorite author. I am wholly on the side of ship and let ship and authors writing whatever they want since in the end it's just a story, but I am even more firmly on the side of tagging properly. Missing scene and canon divergent do coexist but they are not synonymous. If Ed and Stede suddenly are banging Zheng on the beach, that's canon divergent at the least since that would never happen in canon. Just like Sam and Dean suddenly going at it while Dean's nearly suicidal over a dead Cas would never happen in canon and it should be labeled that way!

So yeah, all that's basically me agreeing and nodding along with you about being weirded out when that happens.

Thank you for reaching out anon, because I was honestly starting to Feel Ways about it all. It also makes me feel like it was worth discussing in public, which is a habit I have developed over the years after being burned when discussing things in private in fandom spaces.

Believe it or not, when I first started trying to make sense of it all my first thought was that it was an experiment or a writing exercise like what you describe. I've seen that kind of thing before and not batted an eye, but it's usually acknowledged as such in an author's note or something. Last time I checked that wasn't the case here.

I should also say that I've regularly seen and scrolled past non-canonical ships of all kinds, in this fandom and others, but it's like you said, how something is presented matters so much. Also also I should make it clear that I'm less bothered by the more recent trio example than I was the Stizzy one, because presenting Stizzy as anything but canon divergent raises uncomfortable questions about race and gender stuff that can't be ignored. Or at least it can't be ignored by me.

But like I said I guess this is my fault for taking things by author instead of on a fic to fic basis. Subscribing to an author: not even once.