Great post! Concur with everything. Am also an 'older fan' who has been around since the show first started - though unlike you, I stuck with it, although I *almost* quit after s8-9 where they were getting pretty nasty with the brother feuding AND really battening down on all the subtext, so that it started to feel like the sea change in direction and writing staff was actively fighting the Wincest fans. A lot of that relaxed later but it never truly got back to early season vibes until the finale! Plus you weren't really missing anything, although I still really enjoyed the show right through to s14 (I won't talk about s15 because it's awful). It was not the same show, not by a long chalk. The Kripke years really were the best.
One thing that puzzles me both in your OP and some of the comments - why is everyone talking as though Wincest is dead, abandoned or in hiding? I'm an active Wincest fan, I read and write for challenges that are running as strong as ever, and am in regular communication with lots of other Wincest fans... We haven't gone anywhere! In fact that side of fandom has been fighting quite strenuously against all the conspiracy theories of the Destiel fans. But I remember fondly the early days of s4-5, when Cas was relatively new and Kripke was still in charge, and though there was some resistance to the new mythology arc, fans at the time were quite friendly regardless of their favoured ships...
Speaking of Cas, and the whole Heaven-angels thing, I think it should be pointed out that it only happened because of the s3 writers' strike, which did not leave Kripke enough time to wrap up his original plot the way he wanted. Some of us are glad of this, because it would have ended with BOTH Sam and Dean in Hell for eternity. Genius but depressing story telling; I prefer the extant show finale, despite all its flaws!
Another thing I'd like to add to the mix is a third 'perspective' on Wincest. It is very true that the bulk of fic treats it as the result of their highly constrained childhood, but I think a great many go even further than that - the implication is generally that 1) they are soulmates (this is canon, as laid out in Dark Side of the Moon, and I'm pretty sure Dabb opened up Heaven in the finale just so he wouldn't have to deal with THAT whole can of worms) and 2) *because* of their upbringing, and then everything that continues to happen to them throughout the show - including the fridging of anyone who gets even remotely close to them, whether family, friends or lovers - if the poor boys can't settle down with each other, then they get nobody.
Putting 1) and 2) together along with 3) they can't have an accidental child (although see the ABO trope...) you get a scenario in which actually, natural and legal reactions to incest aside, Wincest is less of a shocking, 'oh no look how awful their lives are for this to happen!' idea and more of 'it works - for them. They complete one another, they are happy, nobody is normalising it, but in their case it's a positive thing'. Thus, a lot of Wincest fic is a truly happy place for many fans, and we really aren't just blurring the edges to 'make it fit the romance trope' or writing brilliantly savage exposes of how fucked up it all is; we're just taking the on-screen brotherly love that final step, closing that last gap in the circle, and letting them have sex together the way they have everything else. Really the sex is just an added benefit; the whole point of Wincest is the brotherly love, and there's also a lot of 'Gencest' or closer-than-normal but still platonic fic. I've actually read theories on tumblr that Gencest IS Wincest and should be renamed as such, in an attempt to 'clean up' the field by bibros anti-smut fans... Anyway, it's all fiction, so I refuse to be apologetic for my stance.
As a final note - and I hope you don't mind that my reply is so long! - while there are many instances of misogyny in the show, I haven't let them put me off. I think there are also many examples of good, strong, non-sexualised women - right out the gates we had Missouri Moseley (also black!), Ellen and Jo (potential sex appeal but resisted to her own credit), even Ruby I; despite being a villain as we later discovered; in this incarnation she wasn't sleeping with Sam so stood on her own merits. Not to mention Mary herself, who was a hunter and not such a Madonna character as she seemed in Dean's eyes. Then later we had Charlie (also LGBTQ representation!) and Rowena - another villain, but such a good one, and we'll just gloss over the unfortunate later liaisons with Gabriel and Ketch which really did her character no favours.
Even the romantic interests were universally strong, independent, clever, all round realistic women, so I've tended to 'read' particularly Dean's linguistic misogyny as a reflection of his culture rather than his mindset. True, he says 'bitch' a lot, but he never disrespects women for their gender, and as for the fridging aspect... well, this show fridges EVERYONE. It even fridges Dean, in the end. TV has a way to go before it can overcome the old stereotypes but I think Supernatural does a pretty good job when it thinks about it, though like any show they can be lazy and fall into common traps with peripheral characters. Don't even get me started on the whole adult!Lilith debacle... But anyway, just as with the lack of queer representation, I never expect TV to represent women well (Buffy was a notable exception, despite what its creator got up to) so overall I have actually been pleasantly surprised by Supernatural's treatment of women, though I won't argue that the usual tired old tropes don't raise their heads.
no subject
One thing that puzzles me both in your OP and some of the comments - why is everyone talking as though Wincest is dead, abandoned or in hiding? I'm an active Wincest fan, I read and write for challenges that are running as strong as ever, and am in regular communication with lots of other Wincest fans... We haven't gone anywhere! In fact that side of fandom has been fighting quite strenuously against all the conspiracy theories of the Destiel fans. But I remember fondly the early days of s4-5, when Cas was relatively new and Kripke was still in charge, and though there was some resistance to the new mythology arc, fans at the time were quite friendly regardless of their favoured ships...
Speaking of Cas, and the whole Heaven-angels thing, I think it should be pointed out that it only happened because of the s3 writers' strike, which did not leave Kripke enough time to wrap up his original plot the way he wanted. Some of us are glad of this, because it would have ended with BOTH Sam and Dean in Hell for eternity. Genius but depressing story telling; I prefer the extant show finale, despite all its flaws!
Another thing I'd like to add to the mix is a third 'perspective' on Wincest. It is very true that the bulk of fic treats it as the result of their highly constrained childhood, but I think a great many go even further than that - the implication is generally that 1) they are soulmates (this is canon, as laid out in Dark Side of the Moon, and I'm pretty sure Dabb opened up Heaven in the finale just so he wouldn't have to deal with THAT whole can of worms) and 2) *because* of their upbringing, and then everything that continues to happen to them throughout the show - including the fridging of anyone who gets even remotely close to them, whether family, friends or lovers - if the poor boys can't settle down with each other, then they get nobody.
Putting 1) and 2) together along with 3) they can't have an accidental child (although see the ABO trope...) you get a scenario in which actually, natural and legal reactions to incest aside, Wincest is less of a shocking, 'oh no look how awful their lives are for this to happen!' idea and more of 'it works - for them. They complete one another, they are happy, nobody is normalising it, but in their case it's a positive thing'. Thus, a lot of Wincest fic is a truly happy place for many fans, and we really aren't just blurring the edges to 'make it fit the romance trope' or writing brilliantly savage exposes of how fucked up it all is; we're just taking the on-screen brotherly love that final step, closing that last gap in the circle, and letting them have sex together the way they have everything else. Really the sex is just an added benefit; the whole point of Wincest is the brotherly love, and there's also a lot of 'Gencest' or closer-than-normal but still platonic fic. I've actually read theories on tumblr that Gencest IS Wincest and should be renamed as such, in an attempt to 'clean up' the field by bibros anti-smut fans... Anyway, it's all fiction, so I refuse to be apologetic for my stance.
As a final note - and I hope you don't mind that my reply is so long! - while there are many instances of misogyny in the show, I haven't let them put me off. I think there are also many examples of good, strong, non-sexualised women - right out the gates we had Missouri Moseley (also black!), Ellen and Jo (potential sex appeal but resisted to her own credit), even Ruby I; despite being a villain as we later discovered; in this incarnation she wasn't sleeping with Sam so stood on her own merits. Not to mention Mary herself, who was a hunter and not such a Madonna character as she seemed in Dean's eyes. Then later we had Charlie (also LGBTQ representation!) and Rowena - another villain, but such a good one, and we'll just gloss over the unfortunate later liaisons with Gabriel and Ketch which really did her character no favours.
Even the romantic interests were universally strong, independent, clever, all round realistic women, so I've tended to 'read' particularly Dean's linguistic misogyny as a reflection of his culture rather than his mindset. True, he says 'bitch' a lot, but he never disrespects women for their gender, and as for the fridging aspect... well, this show fridges EVERYONE. It even fridges Dean, in the end. TV has a way to go before it can overcome the old stereotypes but I think Supernatural does a pretty good job when it thinks about it, though like any show they can be lazy and fall into common traps with peripheral characters. Don't even get me started on the whole adult!Lilith debacle... But anyway, just as with the lack of queer representation, I never expect TV to represent women well (Buffy was a notable exception, despite what its creator got up to) so overall I have actually been pleasantly surprised by Supernatural's treatment of women, though I won't argue that the usual tired old tropes don't raise their heads.