Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help.
It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread
for ongoing cleanup projects.
Ouch- imagine having to fight about whether actual incest is the better ship or not. This definitely feels a bit iffy.
(Don't) take me home.
Linking to specific questionable edits would be helpful in this case.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=YMMV.Supernatural#edit31461122
- Accidental Aesop: In Season 3's finale, Bobby infamously says "family don't end with blood", and Sam and Dean (but especially Dean) eventually start referring to other characters as family, except they pretty much always end up throwing said "family" under the bus if it means they can save each other. What makes this "Accidental" instead of a Broken Aesop or a Lost Aesop is that this is recurring flaw that they're repeatedly getting called out on, meaning it was never intended to be a lesson learned, at least not learned by Sam and Dean in specific.
- Common Knowledge: Given the fandom was intensely popular in fandom spaces such as Website/Tumblr in the early 2010s but began waning after 2014, then suddenly gained a lot of attention in November 2020, both at times when Dean/Castiel was the Fan-Preferred Couple, there are several misconceptions about the show from fans who've either been out of fandom for years or only heard about the show through the memes, largely to do with downplaying the brothers' relationship or demoting Sam's role in the story.
- Acceptable Targets: The show makes a lot of jabs towards Shipping fans, primarily of the Wincest (Sam/Dean shipping) fans.(Sam/Dean) variety, though not even Destiel (Dean/Cas) is not immune. This change isn't bad (the show does take multiple somewhat blunt potshots at Wincest fans in earlier seasons, and then one episode that makes fun of both factions in a more genial manner later on) but it should be noted that this entry, which originally only talked about the mocking of Wincest fans, has been specifically targeted by another user named Vrotdugi who I've reported before for rather blatant agenda-based vandalism in the past. So given the context of past edits, it's a magnet for editing by fans with specific axes to grind.
Off the top of my head, these three.
^^I mean, which side is subjectively better isn't really under question here, as we're a descriptive site rather than a prescriptive one. It's more whether they're presenting information about the divide in a way that is not disingenious, and it feels like this editor is definitely adding entries for the purpose of stealth complaining about Destiel fans, even though it's very much a glass stones from glass houses kind of fandom.
Edited by AlleyOop
So, any opinions?
The only thing I know about the show is that it has very long character pages :-) And on a surface level I don't see anything wrong about these entries, they seem pretty neutral to me, but a bit lacking in details. I.e. the last one would benefit from adding actual examples of "jabs towards fans". If the question is whether they are factually correct, it is a question for the fans.
I haven't seen all episodes of the show, but "jabs at the fans" may include episodes featuring books which (somehow) replay the Winchesters' cases or "hunts". They also discover the book series has "fan conventions" where attendees wear cosplay as Sam, Dean, and others. And yes, their reactions upon finding the fan fiction online was priceless!
Edited by PCD
The three mentioned examples either should have been written better or don't work out in general, me thinks. As for the shipping specifically, I think that part fits Take That, Audience! more, a few episodes have meta nods and I recall at least twice the cast saying they're "not that close".
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Alright, I cut the first two entries and migrated the third one.
Hi! I had no idea this thread was going on until it was linked in your edit so sorry for my late answer. I concede that some of my edits (especially the Accidental Aesop and Common Knowledge ones) are indeed biased and I appreciate being corrected on the matter. I'll err on the side of caution and try to check my neutrality for the future.
I've been monitoring the Supernatural page for a while now to cut down on agenda-based editing in wake of the show's controversial ending. I know enough about it from osmosis to understand what the different fandom camps are, which generally fall into three camps: Destiel fans (Dean/Castiel shippers, the largest group), Wincest fans (Sam/Dean shippers, second most common group), and Bibros (platonic Sam+Dean, the audience to whom the show has officially markets itself, though the show's LGBT Fanbase and Yaoi Fangirls have famously disputed this), and how acrimonious things are that keeping an eye on that page is necessary.
Destiel and Wincest fans notoriously do not get along, and I've had to clean up vandalism related to that war in the past. Bibros, though they officially prefer the brothers' relationship platonic, often take the side of Wincest fans against Destiel fans because they share more in common. Bibros are characterized as not liking non-Sam or Dean characters in general, but their dislike for Castiel is less because of Die for Our Ship and more because they consider him a Spotlight-Stealing Squad who took attention away from Sam and made the show more about an expanded cast. Many saw this as a good thing (Castiel was meant to appear in only a few episodes, but the very positive reception from audiences and critics led to him becoming an Ascended Extra and eventually a Breakout Character, especially since the earlier seasons developed a Broken Base where one half of fans believed that the show's exclusive focus on the brothers resulted in a great deal of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character or Plot), but Bibros see him as the harbinger of They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.
Many of Lapistier's
edits on the Supernatural YMMV page and others are fine enough and stay nonpartisan, but other times it comes off as a Bibro Righting Great Wrongs or stealth complaining about fans who feel differently. I am not the only one who feels this way, am I?
Edited by AlleyOop