We really went all out this year. Here are 100 ships delivering the goods from all corners of all fandoms straight to your eyes. Yes, really. 100 of them. And that still barely scratched the surface. Did your OTP make the list?
Also interesting: there are 6 RPS on this list, most from relatively large/widespread fandoms (One Direction) or with big-name celebrities (Taylor Swift and Karli Kloss). And yet there’s Misha and Jensen keeping company with folks who have sheer numbers on their side.
It doesn’t make us any better or any more right (we’re right), but it suggests a much larger proportion of the fandom in general is behind this ship (and tagging frantically). Well done, team. Very well done.
I’m mostly fascinated that Cockles runs that close to Sabriel content. I mean it’s no secret to fandom that Destiel is a huge phenomenon, but Sabriel keeps fairly close company (while not being totally mutual) and generally, RPS isn’t as widely accepted as, say … well, actual fiction ships due to moral holdoffs and social reservation against it. So to say, “The concept of RPS ship Cockles is the size of Sabriel, the second largest ship in the fandom” is… actually pretty big lmao. I don’t even go here but I’ll give accolades where accolades is due. They all outperformed other supposedly ancient huge ships, such as Wincest, which didn’t make the list, much less J2.
In b4 J2 hats or Wincest shippers start trying to whine about crosstagging being responsible, which they’re actually a bigger criminal in than anything, with no explanation on why they didn’t even clip the top 100 in the fictional ship ahoyhoy.
i’m stil LOLing over this
also detroit: become human came out a mere six months ago and hank/connor is number 32.
but j2 and wincest? around for going on 14 years? suspiciously missing.
it’s just a LOLs fest over here. hankcon hasn’t even been around a whole year and they managed to make the list.
i think i found the answer to the bro face touching
100% cockles fault
If this gifs makes you go to the “Bitch Cockles is there” stage, welcome in our dumpster. The Cockles dumpster.
LIFE AS A COCKLES TRASH
i love how in a few short years i went from “yeah ok i see it but ain’t my thing” to making my own original posts about cockles. I MADE A GIF SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS POST
know what else is cockles fault?
ME BREAKING MY DEACADE LONG SOBRIETY FROM RPS
CUZ THEY OPEN THE FLOOD GATES FOR OTHER RPSES IN OTHER FANDOMS
GAH
ASSHOLES
Cockles or Destiel?
i think i found the answer to the bro face touching
Doesn’t really ship but lowkey believes in it. *I* don’t even ship it but let me make this BETTER FOR YOU ALL.
Okay so let me put this into some context. My girlfriend until about a year(ish… maybe year and a half?) ago was violently anti-Destiel. Like, to the point that even before I fell in the trashcan, half of my rhetoric was designed to actually defend shippers from narratives I’d heard her breaking out (which she had unwittingly soaked up from the anti lanes she didn’t realize she was floating in like WinBros on FB that are so easy to casually fall into for years if you aren’t deep-exploration-fandom). I always defended Destiel shippers and understood their narrative and production standpoint, if from a literary arms’ length level. 13×5 slammed the nail in my dumpster coffin after holding out, again for literary reasons because to me it was a full series of bookends beyond bookends and a direct mirror of a few other earlier endgames and all kinds of other shit I’ve already discussed. Like I literally couldn’t hold out because as someone raised in literature, at that point, I could not negotiate the plot details as anything other than canonically romantic.
I found out a few months ago she had lowkey fallen into the Destiel dumpster recently–though I had my suspicions before that, such as her suggesting songs for me to make Destiel videos to. I had dismissed it as her deciding to be supportive rather than argumentative since we’d actually had a few spats (mostly from mischosen words like calling me her Cas while she identifies as Dean [cuz… her Sam would be gross; as antiDestiel as she was, she was 100x more antiWincest], only to turn around and a few sentences later talk about hating Destiel, so OW.); but nope, turns out she’d been trying to fight out of the dumpster.
Well, today I got asked about a few things by her, like The Ineffable Post, Mitch Kosterman’s RT, or whatever. And I sort of flatfaced, because I hadn’t even told her the contents of The Ineffable Post, so I started with a whole idle thing on why I don’t mind Cockles shippers, even if I feel like they may kinda be onto something, I just put it in the bin of “not my business” and move on without thinking about it as best I can, but don’t mind them because they’re just so benign and squii-based unlike the core of J2 Tinhat fandom. Well, she turns around and is like “I mean, I gotta admit. Yeah it’s not my business but Jensen is wayyyy more comfortable with Misha these days and like, sure, there’s gotta be something going on there but whatever is giving him googly eyes at Misha and looking at various parts of him the way he does, not my business but yeah.”
I think I almost fell over. And she doesn’t hang in shipper circles, she doesn’t do ANY of that, oh my gOD whAT. She also cited all by her onesies the difference between Cockles “omg I love boyfriends!” vs like “J1/2 needs to drop that fucking talentless cunt” attitudes what the fuck.
WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON THIS LAST YEAR OR TWO.
Cockles Stage 1:
Cockles Stage 2:
Cockles Stage 3:
Cockles Stage 4:
Cockles Stage 5:
Cockles Stage 6:
(Tag urself)
I guess I’m somewhere between ½, and she’s somewhere between 2/3. Pretty sure we’re gonna hang around 2 though. I really don’t consider it shipping. But – the real thing is –
I think what got me was her calling out so many J2/Cockles ship differences. Like her gaydar is going off hard on Cockles and she considers it genuine flirtation and sees it draw out a completely different side in Jensen that nobody else does, whereas she literally started – just us smoking on the porch mind you, and me weathering through it as “Yeah, Cockles shippers are pretty nice folks” – pretty much slamming on the way J2 hats read J2 because they twist any form of contact into hatting material, which – even though she hates talking concepts like “societal enforced toxic masculinity” as a woman raised extremely conservative and just now really coping with her own bi-ness – that was basically the subtext of what she was unwittingly getting at. That J2 Hats won’t even let them breathe in each other’s vicinity or pat each other on the shoulder or knee which is wildly unfair to them and to dudes, or twisting every joke they make, or moment they hang out; versus Jensen turning into a flirty, swaying gigglemonster and blatantly eyeballing certain things I don’t even have the balls to type.
I was freaking MINDBLOWN to hear this from her. MIND. BLOWN.
Because we DON’T talk about RPS in this house. We DON’T discuss it. She was once more overt about her distaste of RPS than of Destiel even. I don’t think she ever really rivaled anything against her distaste of Wincest, but, come on, it’s fucking incest. This just came up on a fluke from my recent overt laughing about Mitch and vague mention of The Ineffable Post so she got curious wtf was being talked about. (That should scale how little we talk about it – I didn’t even mention that post to her. She had no idea.) But once it came out it all came out and I’m over here like
as some of y’all may know, i used to be into the whose line rps fandom back when i was a youngin. i got older and i grew out of rps. got too empathetic, apparently.
cockles is… well… i tried very very very hard not to let it bite me. i even sent an ask a couple years ago to destieldrabblesdaily who is a cockles shipper going “i really am not into rps…. BUT THEY JUST WONT STOP”
now i’m at the stage where it’s fun to talk about and giggle over, but i still won’t read fic cause that’s still Not My Thing, tho i try (with them and several other rps ships; i just cant turn my brain off). i’m even in a group for them. A GROUP, GUYS.
they just… keep… FLIRTING
it’s so obvious that the kind of happy jensen is with misha is different than the happy he is with jared. the kind with misha is so similar to the happiness you see on his face when he’s with danneel that my brain just can’t NOT think “jfc guys YOURE IN PUBLIC”
like my god look at these two
i’ve given up fighting it and now i’m just along for the ride, wherever these assholes take me.
And I try to avoid following too many RPS blogs (a few venture into Cockles on occasion, like so, obviously, but.)
Literally I’m just scrolling through walls of Cockles rn.
I could probably blacklist the tag but generally even though I’m not an RPS fan 99% of Cockles squii is so benign I’d just be missing out on general adorbs JenMish content.
BUT STILL LMAO
THEY MAKE US DO IT!! IT’S NOT OUR FAAUULLLTTT!!
For serious, though, I have considered having a sideblog to split off my SPN/Destiel and my RPS content. Unexpectedly, Cockles pretty much took over this blog this year. (It surprised me too, believe me, and I have some analytic thoughts about why that I might share later.) But I do still want to do what I came here for; write meta for the show and reflect on it in a fairly analytic way (with additional yelling about especially great photos or panels).
I actually think most of my followers are here for Cockles because my numbers go up-up-up after I do Cockles meta or crack posts and I SO GET THAT b/c I am delighted by Cockles blogs and lurked on them for a long time before deciding to go ahead and be a public supporter of an RPS (again, complex thoughts on this). I think this would have to stay the Cockles blog because, honestly, I think most of my followers are here for Cockles (and the other ones tolerate it or blacklist the tag b/c it is, as you say, largely benign).
So, I’m turning that over in my head and I’m somewhat curious about who would make the jump to a quieter and more show-focused sideblog while this one stayed Cockles and yelling and endless pictures of Misha Collins. It seems kinda nuts to ask people to follow you two places, or choose based on content, but I don’t want to lose either of my communities (the meta blogs AND the dumpster mansion).
I’m a HUGE fan of curating your internet experience to make it the best for yourself, though, and I think this might improve things for other people and also let me interact in more different ways on different types of content. Hmmm. Thoughts welcome, in comments or asks or DMs.
Sorry for the post hijack @intelligentshipper but my thoughts are often with you and my other buddies who dip their toe in the flaming trash fires but don’t like to backstroke through it.
Oh, I’m not trying to make anyone feel called out. If anything, it’s become something I routinely chuckle about. I really don’t mind if. If I did, I’d just blacklist the tag. You guys are so benign about your RPS that I really can’t bring myself to be frustrated with it. It’s like tumblr is my flag on if I missed anything about Jensen and/or Misha anywhere.
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