I’m gonna call it like I see it. That post, from 2012 – the phrasing and runaround of incest-not-incest-gen-not-gen-intense-relationship, and even the punctuation style, it’s all identical to the current account trying to pimp out this idea. They’re using the very same replies like a copy paste marketing agent. They struggled to sell the idea back then and they’re trying to re-sell it now, and it’s going to get approval from the same people it got in 2012. Remember when I did a backlog search and said most of its usage cropped up in 2012? It was around that thread. Prior to that, there were a grand total of two fics, one in 2005 and one in 2006, tagged that.
That post epicentered around trying to convince people “Gencest” was a name for existing Sam & Dean fiction while trying to parallel it to Destiel fanfics, if I remember the wanky pages I viewed correctly. It was an inflationist cheesy competitional rhetoric that other people were going “Dafuq?” back in 2012 and they’re doing it now because it never took off beyond about a dozen fics after that.
This whole “It’s an old fandom guard! You must live under a rock! Everybody knows!” elitist attitude is particularly hilariously bad because this is literally a repeating cycle. Nobody knew then and barely anybody knew about it now. The strangest form of gatekeeping I ever-did-see: “If you don’t know about this tag, which has been used on less than 30 fanfics from the dawn of time and is even casually mentioned only 420 times on the entire internet, you’re not a tru old guard fan, everybody knows.” – That’s more of a really-bad-attempt at insult to injurious action against people blockading out the topic effectively with blacklists, which is the true issue at hand here, while otherwise kidnapping away S&D fics that might BE harmless into the wanky pile from people who would otherwise read it if it isn’t incesty.
No fam, your moderately-among-your-own-closest-friends-kind-of-locally-successful-tag-from-2012 is not definitive of “old fandom” or “things everybody knows.” And if your reach ends there, that kind of says a lot.
Bruh
“Everybody knows! The power of the old fandom compels you!”
Bruh
And half of that is you telling everybody they should know what it is.
1. interesting theory that seems to make sense given that they were also terrible back then at defending it as just genfic
sound familiar?
“And half of that is you telling everybody they should know what it is.”
RIGHT? like damn. i did a google search and legit most of the results were people asking wtf it meant
ITS NOT A WELLKNOWN TERM
like damn even teens know what “slash” means, and it’s not widely used as much anymore. it has nothing to do with being old and everything with weirdly forcing everyone to accept a term you made up.
Okay, about this “g*ncest” thing that just cropped up which makes me feel like I splintered back to the year 2006 and aren’t we over this by now…what that is is a bona fide example of toxic masculinity attitudes at work and being valorized by a small number of fans, mostly female.
I was largely ignoring the discourse around this—some people don’t understand the term, or they don’t like Wincest and react angrily to anything dealing with it or its shippers—but this was presented as “I know we should be over this and here’s why,” so let me write a rebuttal.
This will also act as a way to talk about the genre a little bit more for those who may not understand.
Dear Gencest Mod Thank you for such a well reasoned and patient rebuttal.
I 100% endorse everything you’ve said here, and admire that you stayed completely objective throughout. I would also point out that the term gencest is not something that has just suddenly popped up, it’s certainly been around for as long as I’ve been in SPN fandom (c2009).
Thank you! I try not to get engaged with fandom wank, but the misinformation of both the term and our intentions, and how disproportionately angry folks appear to be over it confused the heck outta me, ha!
You’re totally correct in Gencest’s history (though I think it may go back even to the beginning of the fandom c2005/c2006) and that’s what matters. This fic writing challenge is for people who already love Gencest and I’ll be focusing on just that from now on.
Besdies, knowing our dear fandom, something will happen at a con and the old drama machine will move on from a tiny fic challenge.
It should surprised exactly nobody that someone from a certain fanbase is throwing tantrums even about a gen ficathon and also still trying to make it all about THEIR ship and bawwww feel sorry for how we’re badly WE’RE treated. It’s like clockwork with them.
we’ve been perfectly calm and reasonable.
you are also missing the point and deciding that this is about a ship war. no one gives a shit about whether it’s w*ncest or not. people don’t want triggery ships thrown in their face. the issue also is this
if this big bang isn’t for people who love the bro bond minus the *ncest, it’s NOT gen
y’all wanna write w*ncest lite, have at it! tag appropriately and call the spade a spade. i couldn’t care less that you ship it, truly.
i love the bro bond, as do most people. the issue here isn’t some ship war or hate for the bros. we just don’t want -cest slapped onto everything to do with sam&dean and we especially don’t appreciate this insistence that -cest means something other than *ncest
Ah yes, gen that is but isn’t gen and incest that is but isn’t incest but is totally not incest and totally for the incesters but totally gen, but incest. And they don’t see why people have issue with its tagging. Tagging is designed to keep people safe. Intentionally circumventing them, trying to make it ambiguous – just like this ridiculous dance-about word play – is incredibly cruel to people who have efficiently blotted it out of their feeds. Yes. Cruel. Just because a few people got away with calling it that on a back corner blog – emphasis on a few, a whole 2 fics 2005-6, 3 by 1 person on DA 2 years ago and a few smattered around – doesn’t mean it should be promoted and highlighted as a new, brighter, shinier way to circumvent proper tagging.
You want to write non-explicit Wincest? Go for it! That’s great. You want to write explicit incest? Go for it! Just tag your ship appropriately. But it’s not not-incest because they’re not explicitly fucking in the Impala, and if that’s where your vision of “gen” is, it honestly explains a fuck of a lot of things.
This just in guys, go ahead and write your nonexplicit DeanCas romance and suggestive fics as gen. Works by their standard. Seeing as DeanCas has one of the lowest explicit rankings on Ao3, that qualifies most of their work as “gen” by this new, shiny, ridiculous standard. And seeing as DeanCas isn’t a r*pe or *ncest ship or other similar trigger, you’re actually not impeding nearly as much. Have at it. DeanCas up that gen. Because clearly, gencest thinks if it isn’t explicit it’s gen, apparently.
exactly! for example, i wrote a sabriel fic that didn’t have kisses or sex and only a slight hint of romance and was only a bit more than what’s show canon. but i was honest and i tagged it sabriel because that’s what i intended it to be.
I SHOULD BE SLEEPING BUT I HAD A THOUGHT AND NOW IT WONT LEAVE
so i was shutting down some negativity with a positive qt about this summary:
and i was being very “hey these bonds need a shot at forming too” (because they do and sam&cas deserve some bro time that isn’t centered around OMG WE NEED TO SAVE DEAN) when it dawned on me:
mary was paired up with sam when they split up and they talked about bobby and how she finds it hard to get him to open up cause walls
and what was she wearing?
and who ELSE do we know wears a tan coat, hmm?
me when i connected the dots
ME AN HOUR LATER AFTER IT PROCESSED:
YALL
like imagine
cas and sam are in the car driving home. sam checks in with cas, just seeing how he’s doing emotionally cause that’s sam for ya. cas tries to use the winchester f word but half way through the syllable opens up about how he wishes dean would just talk to him about his trauma and let down his walls
and sam tells him the same thing he told his mother: that if he cares about him, and he knows cas does, he’d try to get past that wall.
i’m a freakin endgame-positive shipper and i’m gobsmacked at how freaking obvious they’re being
God I don’t like speculating too positively just in case cos I get accused of winding up the fandom but there’s a real opportunity there. I mean it just makes sense at this point. I don’t even hope for or expect it all but just Cas lamenting Dean’s walls would be epic.
It’s Bucklemming so either it’ll not happen at all or it’ll be a literal spade to the face… let’s see! Let’s not forget too that season 13 started off with a similar massive bang (and season 12 was quite strong too) then petered off massively so who knows, it could also just fizzle out. Let’s see and fingers crossed it doesn’t tho 😉
Also, @tinkdw, I don’t know how this relates but I’m pretty sure that at SDCC Eugenie said she wrote lines for Cas for this episode that she really liked?? Now, this is Eugenie so this could mean everything and nothing, and I still don’t trust her in any way, but they did step up their game for 14×02 and I’m hoping that by that she means good character development lines (though I find it hard to believe Dabb would give some kind of reveal, as subtle as it might be, to Bucklemming, unless he is guiding them somehow).
Still, the Cas stuff in 14×02 was SO GOOD I can’t help but be excited about Sam and Cas finally partnering up on a case!
yeah @tinkdw i don’t want to get my hopes up either it’s just that one purposeful wardrobe choice and pairing… it’s still just so blatant, no matter what cas and sam end up discussing, that my brain just can’t let that go
i can trust what eugenie says as far as i can throw her, but i believe that it was @intelligentshipper that mentioned she writes some good cas stuff so we’ll see!
also the fact that they’re using the buddy system is the cutest.
(and this is honestly just teeny giggle worthy i thought of because when using the buddy system, dean and cas aren’t paired up LOOOL)
I was falling asleep and didn’t have the brainpower to respond to this last night, but yes to all of the above. Generaly I don’t trust Leming but for the last few years her work with Cas has been solid, 14.02 wasn’t actually a shitshow, I’m staying at “hopes high, expectations low.” But while we may be able to – say – expect some clunky dialogue out of her we may also be able to think Dabb and co went, hey Eugenie, here’s what we’re aiming for. Because it honestly feels – given I’m gauging off of 14.02 – that she’s actually playing with the other kids in the writing room this year. In my experience BL eps OFTEN have them seperated. But minding that say, Dean’s confessional, or “You look good/should rest” all came out of BL eps, I don’t think we can gauge that they hard no homo wall it – whether or not it’s on purpose or not, they have written us good content in the area before. Buck always seems to handle Dean and Eugenie always seems to handle Cas, until they do their final bond-across moments to tie the episode together.
*serves cake*
Yeah, as soon as I saw the synopsis, I delighted in what we CAN potentially get after MIRROR-loaded 14×04 and 14×05 (in that 05 was, again, giving us increasingly overt nudges as per Bobby/Mary = Dean/Cas to communicate trauma, DECONSTRUCT it, and lean on each other (aka Dean desires Cas the confidante/lover-coded textual best friend, while Cas desires Dean to open up to him) as a relational unit for psychological healing.
High hopes, low expectations, yet again, BL’s 02 was surprisingly cohesive and non-creepy.
RIGHT I WAS SHOCKED
i have a feeling it’ll be like the awkward dinner at jody’s and only because jack might mention something.
dean doesnt want to think about his family having sex. which is understandable and relatable lol
also very interesting considering that he took cas to a brothel once….
Okay, about this “g*ncest” thing that just cropped up which makes me feel like I splintered back to the year 2006 and aren’t we over this by now…what that is is a bona fide example of toxic masculinity attitudes at work and being valorized by a small number of fans, mostly female.
Adding onto this, because I apparently missed a whole extra limb of this that’s actually patronizing and devaluing genfic. The g*ncest enthusiasts think the -cest has to be tacked on otherwise it won’t be emotionally intense enough and this is why the term was created and g*ncest is just gen but emotionally intense enough and what thehell did I just read
Adding onto this, because I apparently missed a whole extra limb of this that’s actually patronizing and devaluing genfic. The g*ncest enthusiasts think the -cest has to be tacked on otherwise it won’t be emotionally intense enough
That actually wasn’t written anywhere on our social media as it true! You can actually go back and check if you like. Please do not put false words in our mouths. The -cest was added on to show that it’s Sam and Dean specific gen.
and this is why the term was created and g*ncest is just gen but emotionally intense enough and what thehell did I just read
I would like to know that as well, because a lot of false statements are being thrown around here. Do you have a link? Because pretty much everyone knows the -cest in Gencest means Sam & Dean and it’s borrowed from the romantic pairing name of Sam and Dean.
how did you even find this post?
secondly, idgaf what y’all wanna describe it as, adding -cest to everything sam&dean is not ok if it’s not supposed to be incestuous.
“pretty much everyone knows”
nope nah uh they don’t. everyone i’ve come across is confused af. and just because some may know that, it doesn’t make it ok nor does it make SENSE.
also if it’s supposed to be about their bond, why did you tell my friend that it isn’t for her and why did someone else tell me the same thing? that’s exclusionary and indicates that something incestuous is happening.
“Pretty much everybody knows,” they defend, while over the course of 14 years of fandom there’s only been 421 mentions of it anywhere google is capable of data-mining. Compared to say, 500K+ W*ncest mentions or heading towards 7 million Destiel mentions. Of course, stalking mentions didn’t help them findthis post where all of this old guard concept already got laid on its ass.
You’re from a small lane of W*ncest shippers that have tried repeatedly to find ways to destigmatize the *ncest element and failed pretty swimmingly. You’re going to end up with the same crowd you have every time. This is a PG-13 *ncest fic competition, let’s not mince words, especially as once you hit any sort of romantic framing, it isn’t even gen. Hard pass.
i don’t understand why they can’t just own up to it or change the name. it can’t be both w*ncest and not.
The most ridiculous part is pretending this is some broad wash though. As I mentioned in the post I linked, even pro-W*ncest “BNF”s in that lane have been arguing “platonic *ncest” by that name, not gencest, for at least a year. People here “since the beginning”. Wild that they’re cropping up pretending this was some “all along” thing even though the internet just doesn’t have receipts of it being widespread, even on old platforms like livejournal, which I independently mined usage of and got 200~ results, mostly casual mentions, mostly from 2k12~. It’s not old guard. It’s not old fandom. It’s niche shenanigans and nothing more. They wanna write PG-13 incest? Fine, whatever fam, but call a spade a spade, stop trying to normalize it, don’t simultaneously kidnap real gen fics, this isn’t fucking hard to understand.
Call a spade a spade.
it’s a new term for spn fandom, definitely. i’ve been in quite a lot of fandoms ever since my family got dial up. i’m familiar with the term. but it’s antiquated. even the term “slash” is getting up there with being outdated because lgbt+ relationships in general in society have become much more accepted.
can you imagine destiel shippers doing this? even other destiel shippers would call it out.
Okay, about this “g*ncest” thing that just cropped up which makes me feel like I splintered back to the year 2006 and aren’t we over this by now…what that is is a bona fide example of toxic masculinity attitudes at work and being valorized by a small number of fans, mostly female.
Adding onto this, because I apparently missed a whole extra limb of this that’s actually patronizing and devaluing genfic. The g*ncest enthusiasts think the -cest has to be tacked on otherwise it won’t be emotionally intense enough and this is why the term was created and g*ncest is just gen but emotionally intense enough and what thehell did I just read
Adding onto this, because I apparently missed a whole extra limb of this that’s actually patronizing and devaluing genfic. The g*ncest enthusiasts think the -cest has to be tacked on otherwise it won’t be emotionally intense enough
That actually wasn’t written anywhere on our social media as it true! You can actually go back and check if you like. Please do not put false words in our mouths. The -cest was added on to show that it’s Sam and Dean specific gen.
and this is why the term was created and g*ncest is just gen but emotionally intense enough and what thehell did I just read
I would like to know that as well, because a lot of false statements are being thrown around here. Do you have a link? Because pretty much everyone knows the -cest in Gencest means Sam & Dean and it’s borrowed from the romantic pairing name of Sam and Dean.
how did you even find this post?
secondly, idgaf what y’all wanna describe it as, adding -cest to everything sam&dean is not ok if it’s not supposed to be incestuous.
“pretty much everyone knows”
nope nah uh they don’t. everyone i’ve come across is confused af. and just because some may know that, it doesn’t make it ok nor does it make SENSE.
also if it’s supposed to be about their bond, why did you tell my friend that it isn’t for her and why did someone else tell me the same thing? that’s exclusionary and indicates that something incestuous is happening.
“Pretty much everybody knows,” they defend, while over the course of 14 years of fandom there’s only been 421 mentions of it anywhere google is capable of data-mining. Compared to say, 500K+ W*ncest mentions or heading towards 7 million Destiel mentions. Of course, stalking mentions didn’t help them findthis post where all of this old guard concept already got laid on its ass.
You’re from a small lane of W*ncest shippers that have tried repeatedly to find ways to destigmatize the *ncest element and failed pretty swimmingly. You’re going to end up with the same crowd you have every time. This is a PG-13 *ncest fic competition, let’s not mince words, especially as once you hit any sort of romantic framing, it isn’t even gen. Hard pass.
i don’t understand why they can’t just own up to it or change the name. it can’t be both w*ncest and not.
Okay, about this “g*ncest” thing that just cropped up which makes me feel like I splintered back to the year 2006 and aren’t we over this by now…what that is is a bona fide example of toxic masculinity attitudes at work and being valorized by a small number of fans, mostly female.
there are some of your points i want to add on, so bear with me
“It’s toxic masculinity to slap the -cest slapping on every-freakin’-thing and then claim you’re being ship-shamed because you actually gate-keeped against fans who really just appreciate the sibling bond and don’t need any -cest to appreciate how close Sam and Dean are and appreciate that bond […] This should be also true of w*ncest fans and enthusiasts of the sibling bond because again, massive emotional component as common ground, but I feel like what’s happening is the more intense and virulent w*ncest fans are trying to draw such a hard line that if you aren’t into incest, there’s no space for you”
this is this absolute kicker. i JUST this morning got told that the gen pairing of sam and dean probably isn’t for me because i objected to genc*st. literally all i objected to was the name.
it’s supposed to be gen fic about their bond, but it’s not for me. that’s so depressingly exclusionary, that’s genuinely the first time someone in this fandom almost made me tear up over something hurtful they said to me. because how dare they tell me that something that’s not supposed to be incestuous NOT BE FOR ME.
and when i tried to defend my point?
no one specifically reached out to me and scared me off of it. hell, w*ncest the concept actually legit made me not watch the show until 2013 because i googled around and i’m that weirdo that reads fics from fandoms i’m not in yet just to get a feel for it and let’s just say this was pre-ao3 tag days. not fun.
i just gave up one day and said “screw it”. they shouldn’t dictate what i enjoy just because i don’t want *ncest in my damn bro bond experience.
and they say d*stiel fans hate their bro bond but i legit can’t read fics where sam isn’t involved or where one of the bros is being a complete ass to the other or their partner (for example there was a canon-verse sabriel fic where dean yells at mute gabe to talk and is constantly mad about it and dean would never do that to a trauma-induced mute person).
hell, i just discovered today when i joined the fandom that i had reblogged a post from nancy talking about how sam wasn’t going to make a deal with crowley to save dean from being a demon, he was going to fight tooth and nail to save him. i clearly care.
“and here’s the ironic part: virulently anti-destiel w*ncest fans and ship shamey non-shippers slapped D*stiel with a default assumption that it’s all about fapping material and two dudes getting it on and you just want to make spn into a porno”
what’s funny is that i and others like me can’t write anything above a T-rating because we aren’t comfortable doing that.
also it’s 2018, not 2000. we all have access to internet which means we have access to porn. if i wanted to watch to hot guys have sex, i would just watch that ffs. this talking point is so old, i was a teen when i saw it for the first time and i’m in my 30s now.
ugh. i need to go wash this off with some fic. preferably one with their bond that isn’t slapped with a freaking -cest label.
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