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Supernatural feels
Dec. 13th, 2020 04:34 pmETA: Thought this went without saying, but don't repost without permission.
I hear tell Supernatural ended. (And by hear tell, I mean it’s been rather hard to avoid.) This has meant that there’s been a lot of Supernatural retrospective content coming out.
Supernatural has always been an odd fandom for me—I watched it for the first five seasons, and was as prolific as I’ve ever been in any fandom (which is admittedly not much). I’ve never been a fan of any note, but I was more active in SPN as it was airing than I think I’ve ever been in a fandom before or since. I read the meta, subscribed to the newsletter communities, participated in the Big Bang. I went to real life hang outs with other SPN fans. And for me at the time, the experience of fandom was the lj experience of fandom—it was in continuity with fandoms like SGA and Sentinel. It was don’t cross the streams fandom.
Then Supernatural kept going, and for me became the poster child for the changes in fandom overall: the fandom community moved almost entirely to tumblr; the main fans became people who weren’t old enough to watch it in its first few seasons; the show’s creators and stars (particularly Misha Collins) became incredibly involved with fandom. The show went meta. The people behind the scenes were not only aware of fandom, but read the fic, encouraged the fannish community, created ARGs for the fans. All of that was and is still DEEPLY alien to me and how I do my fannishness.
So running across some of the retrospectives is kind of a mindfuck for me. Youtuber Sarah Z just put up an 1:45 video on Destielgate. Pretty much 100% of everything she talks about in that is post any engagement I had with the fandom. But she linked to a reddit post about the first five years of fandom, and this post, written by someone who joined the fandom in 2013 in the tumblr years, honestly pissed me off. Partly for the sanctimony taken towards early fandom, and partly to the general misrepresentation of the concerns of early fandom. I mean, I get that doing internet archaeology is hard, and this is a humorous summary post, but I found it *really* skewed from what my experience was at the time. And then I started thinking about everything I would have to explain to try to explain just how different fandom was at the time. And let’s be honest, I don’t even have a reddit account to reply to this post with (or tumblr, or Instagram, or twitter…this isn’t a luddite stance, it’s mostly laziness). So I’m putting it here on DW, the exact place where I can guarantee that the few people who read it were probably there anyway, and none of the tumblr fans the reddit post is for will ever see it.
( A Fan Is Born )
( Enter Supernatural )
( The elephant in the room—Wincest )
( Leaving Supernatural )
So that’s it. My big (>5,000 word!) pile of feels about Supernatural now that it’s ended. I’ve started getting a lot of kudos on my decade old SPN fic, so I think everyone else is feeling nostalgic as well.
But my main takeaway from this is—what the bulk of fandom is now is not a thing that I recognize. And I don’t think I’ll ever be as involved in a fandom again as I used to be. It’s moved past me, that’s fine, but it’s also seemed to have forgotten its roots and looks down upon the older fans who were watching and writing in a totally different media world. So I’m glad I haven’t tried to keep up, cause I think I’m happier not hearing what the young’uns have to say about us.
I hear tell Supernatural ended. (And by hear tell, I mean it’s been rather hard to avoid.) This has meant that there’s been a lot of Supernatural retrospective content coming out.
Supernatural has always been an odd fandom for me—I watched it for the first five seasons, and was as prolific as I’ve ever been in any fandom (which is admittedly not much). I’ve never been a fan of any note, but I was more active in SPN as it was airing than I think I’ve ever been in a fandom before or since. I read the meta, subscribed to the newsletter communities, participated in the Big Bang. I went to real life hang outs with other SPN fans. And for me at the time, the experience of fandom was the lj experience of fandom—it was in continuity with fandoms like SGA and Sentinel. It was don’t cross the streams fandom.
Then Supernatural kept going, and for me became the poster child for the changes in fandom overall: the fandom community moved almost entirely to tumblr; the main fans became people who weren’t old enough to watch it in its first few seasons; the show’s creators and stars (particularly Misha Collins) became incredibly involved with fandom. The show went meta. The people behind the scenes were not only aware of fandom, but read the fic, encouraged the fannish community, created ARGs for the fans. All of that was and is still DEEPLY alien to me and how I do my fannishness.
So running across some of the retrospectives is kind of a mindfuck for me. Youtuber Sarah Z just put up an 1:45 video on Destielgate. Pretty much 100% of everything she talks about in that is post any engagement I had with the fandom. But she linked to a reddit post about the first five years of fandom, and this post, written by someone who joined the fandom in 2013 in the tumblr years, honestly pissed me off. Partly for the sanctimony taken towards early fandom, and partly to the general misrepresentation of the concerns of early fandom. I mean, I get that doing internet archaeology is hard, and this is a humorous summary post, but I found it *really* skewed from what my experience was at the time. And then I started thinking about everything I would have to explain to try to explain just how different fandom was at the time. And let’s be honest, I don’t even have a reddit account to reply to this post with (or tumblr, or Instagram, or twitter…this isn’t a luddite stance, it’s mostly laziness). So I’m putting it here on DW, the exact place where I can guarantee that the few people who read it were probably there anyway, and none of the tumblr fans the reddit post is for will ever see it.
( A Fan Is Born )
( Enter Supernatural )
( The elephant in the room—Wincest )
( Leaving Supernatural )
So that’s it. My big (>5,000 word!) pile of feels about Supernatural now that it’s ended. I’ve started getting a lot of kudos on my decade old SPN fic, so I think everyone else is feeling nostalgic as well.
But my main takeaway from this is—what the bulk of fandom is now is not a thing that I recognize. And I don’t think I’ll ever be as involved in a fandom again as I used to be. It’s moved past me, that’s fine, but it’s also seemed to have forgotten its roots and looks down upon the older fans who were watching and writing in a totally different media world. So I’m glad I haven’t tried to keep up, cause I think I’m happier not hearing what the young’uns have to say about us.