#but it's my statement of support for fluorescenbrains and others

[autisticandroids]

the funniest thing about the fan bullying vs representation discourse is that if spn has hurt me, it’s been as bad representation, not as a site of fan bullying, but i think the fan bullying is still like... way worse. 

like wrt “destiel shippers are weird perverts,” i was never affected by that because i was even more extremely self-confident then than i am now, and also i grew up in a household with a parent who does sociology of media, so the conclusion i drew from spn not doing destiel and insulting people who did was “i am far smarter than these writers and also straight men, specifically, are insane. i will never understand straight culture. i should never talk to a straight person about tv because they are fools.”

whereas like........ when i say that godstiel arc gave me special new mental illnesses i am exaggerating, but only insofar as i already had those mental illnesses and they were just exacerbated. like godstiel arc really lit a fire under some of my neuroses. but the thing is i wouldn’t... enjoy spn the way i do, without that? this isn’t like the “homophobia on spn makes it more fun” thing, that’s like, dean’s siren being a man, or “you’re kinda butch, maybe people you’re overcompensating.” this is a specific neurosis i have where i seek out things that will hurt me. the reason godstiel arc gives me mental illness is that i actively look into the worst possible interpretations of it. it’s the same thing as when i look up that timelapse of cordyceps fungi growing on youtube to intentionally trigger my phobias. like it’s me intentionally sticking needles into my brain to feel something. if we got rid of all media i could do that with, we would have a restrictive system of censorship in the united states and my life wouldn’t actually be better because in the end, the spn fandom has made my life better, and i wouldn’t have been emotionally invested the way i was without the opportunity to exploit godstiel arc to hurt myself.

but the thing is... i’m unusual in both these cases. i’m the odd one out. most people won’t have my incredible self-confidence as a teenager, or my adversarial mindset, or, most importantly, the supportive-of-interpretation, media studies-influenced environment where i grew up. most people, upon experiencing rudeness, don’t immediately react with “oh. so it seems i’m better than you, then.” like, just because it slid off me doesn’t mean it wasn’t bullying. and like, godstiel arc requires active participation from me in order to hurt myself with it. like, most gay people without my preexisting neuroses are like “cas did nothing wrong.” like, as a joke, but it slides off them. also i’m inclined to see things by statistics and like..... godstiel arc is the only time a homophobic depiction of gay people has ever directly hurt me, and there are a million homophobic depictions of gay people that exist, and indeed that i have consumed, so i’m simply not inclined to believe that homophobic depictions of gay people are necessarily such a huge problem in that specific way that the representation discourse likes to imply. like, they’re reflective of homophobic cultural attitudes, and they can reinforce those attitudes among straight people, but “lgbt people are personally hurt by this” seems like a weird reach in most cases. whereas like, bullying of fans is just that: bullying. which is pretty much always bad. 

also, i would like to be able to have one single conversation with a normie spn fan without having to walk on eggshells to avoid getting hatecrimed.