So, it’s no secret that stan twitter has a hard time discerning where their perspective ends in relation to a broad wash of the general audience. It is one thing to point out that the majority of the audience aren’t single character stans, the majority of the audience are not meta authors/readers, and the majority of the audience aren’t “woke,” but it’s another thing to really carve out what that means before people start yelling about “reasons the show will fail/is failing,” which generally miss the mark already like the recent claims of failing ratings. [1] [2] – and that’s just the recent ones. We’re not gonna touch on how long people have erroneously been citing ratings-death every year, though ironically source 1 touches on the same issue I’ve been talking about in my #ratings tag.
But the real point is – how does the GA react when not actually sculpted by occupants of stan twitter?
I’ve almost accidentally run an observational experiment without realizing it, with the recent streams of SPN by Sonalii Castillo, the actress from The Outpost that I’ve gotten to watch SPN. Make no mistake: Sonalii and I are friends, but I have gone out of my way to not sculpt her vision as much as humanly possible. In fact, it’s to the point I answer “it’s complicated,” or a few episode citations to rewatch when she asks me things that have a very Destiel-esque answer to them, like the “living life in reverse” or Amara finding Dean via Cas when Amara couldn’t find him herself. Answering these from my perspective would automatically paint a Destiel lens, so instead I’ll just direct source a related quote from an episode and/or tell her to watch it and draw her own interpretation.
She’s also point-blank asked me about the nature of Dean and Cas, what point it ends at audience and what point it begins in the show while she’s catching up and hearing about it passingly through people’s fleeting squii tweets. Even that, I’ve tried to leave simply at “it’s complicated, just enjoy it as you see it.” as best I can.
That said, I’ve been doing backflips to avoid heavily impacting her experience, but still catch questions, so I’d like to address some of this beneath a cut to really scale what a GA experience is like for someone coming in with no real extended knowledge of the series or production, and someone who watches on what we WOULD call a “casual viewership” level – and why ratings screeching, yelling about continuity failures causing nonexistent ratings-death, or whatever else simply does NOT match what happens in the GA.
1. it’s been a pleasure watching her watch the show
2. this is what i’ve found in my casual fan friends. they see destiel, but no strong feelings one way or another. don’t really care enough about plot holes. they accept the show the way it is, tbh.
people yelling about ga not tuning in because of whatever plot shit is going on are being ridiculous because i had people ask me when it was airing. that had to do with promos and ads. or lack thereof rather.
and another thing, people yelling that destiel becoming a thing will make the ga tune out massively are out of touch with ga members and/or using them to hide behind their homophobia/biphobia.
in conclusion: DONT USE THE GA TO MAKE AN EXCUSE FOR YOUR NONSENSE RAGING AND BEING A BIGOTED SHITHEAD
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