I Used To Think Maybe You Loved Me (Now Baby I'm Sure): The Reconstruction of the Supernatural Fangirl

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I Used To Think Maybe You Loved Me (Now Baby I’m Sure): The Reconstruction of the Supernatural Fangirl

KT Torrey - @catchclaw | Shannon Cole - @cym2kpresented March 29, 2015 at SCMS 2015

Over a decade ago, Sam and Dean Winchester [SLIDE 2] of

TV’s Supernatural hit the road in search of their missing father.

Along the way, they’ve staved off the Apocalypse, died a few

[dozen] times, and gotten themselves hopelessly entangled with

the forces of Heaven and Hell [SLIDE 3]. However, although the

brothers have learned time [SLIDE 4] and time [SLIDE 5] and time

[SLIDE 6] again that “family don’t end in blood,” [SLIDE 7]

there’s increasing evidence that, as media blogger Aja Romano

notes, the “female, queer, genderqueer, nerdy, and unashamed”

fans of Supernatural that make up the series’ own family are

“diametrically opposed to the straightlaced mainstream audience

[the series] wishes it had” [original emphasis] (Romano). These

tensions reflect wider questions about what Mel Stanfill and

Suzanne Scott, among others, have argued is the increasingly

industrial orientation of fandom.

In this paper, using Scott’s concept of the “quality fan” as

a guide, we will examine the models of female fandom—of

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Supernatural fandom—that have been incorporated into Sam and Dean’s

diagetic world. Through an analysis of Becky Rosen [SLIDE 8],

Charlie Bradbury [SLIDE 9], and Marie [SLIDE 10] we’ll argue that

reading these women through the lens of “quality” fandom

undermines popular perceptions of Charlie and Marie as positive

advancements in fan representation within the series. While they

do embody much-needed injections of female [and queer] into

Supernatural’s hammerhead heternormative world [amen], Charlie and

Marie are ultimately presented as Winchester-approved models of

female fan engagement with the show. And although much past

scholarship has focused on the disciplinary nature of Becky’s

portrayal, we suggest that the seemingly positive, “fan friendly”

models of fangirls offered by Charlie and Marie function in

manner that is similar to—but perhaps more insidious than—

Becky’s. A close examination of the way these characters operate

within the series and in the show’s wider industrial ecology

underscores the difficulty of maintaining reflexivity in our

field, as fans, when the very objects we study are increasingly

intent on pulling us ever closer.

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As the boundaries between fan cultures and the mainstream

become more symbolic than actual, the producers of media content,

along with the corporations who fund them, have begun to engage

more directly—and even diagetically—in attempts to shape and thus

benefit from fan practice. As we know, this issue has become one

of growing interest and concern in our field. For example, in

“Walking the Talk: Enunciative Fandom and Fan Studies’

‘Industrial Turn,’” Suzanne Scott examines the ways in which

AMC’s The Talking Dead—a chat show that runs immediately after the

network’s hit The Walking Dead—forwards a model of what she calls

“quality fandom.” By featuring conversations with a panel of

“celebrity superfans,” the show models “reverence for the text,

creators, and performers” of the series, highlighting

“affirmational, rather than transformational” fan engagement with

the text (Scott). [SLIDE 11] While The Talking Dead invokes the ethos

of fandom—that is, its geek cred, detailed knowledge, and

enthusiasm—Scott argues that, in practice, the show “distances

itself from . . . overly critical, emotionally excessive, or

erotic fan enunciations” of The Walking Dead and in doing so sets

up those behaviors or practices as the definition of a “bad” fan

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(6). In this way, The Talking Dead provides “an industrial vision of

the ‘quality’ fan,” one who is “deeply analytical but never

overtly critical,” who is “wholly focused on the canon,” and who

prizes “the show’s cast and creator’s interpretation of [The

Walking Dead] above their own” (Scott).

Although Scott’s discussion is carefully focused on the

rhetoric of The Talking Dead, we suggest her argument has much to

offer ongoing conversations about relations between Supernatural

and its fandom as they play out in the portrayal of fans and fan

practices within the series. For ten seasons [god help us],

Supernatural has followed the adventures [SLIDE 12] of Sam and Dean

Winchester, two [frighteningly attractive] brothers who cruise

the backroads of America in a ’67 Chevy Impala hunting a never-

ending cavalcade of shit that goes bump in the night. What makes

this genre series so notable, however, is its very particular—and

at times uncomfortably intimate—relationship with its fans. This

relationship, initially cultivated through live conventions first

staged early in the show’s life, has also flourished through

social media engagement—all typical of contemporary cult TV

series. However, Supernatural’s creative team has taken this

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relationship one step further by repeatedly representing fan

characters within the show’s diagesis.

Central to the foregrounding of fandom in Supernatural is

Chuck Shurley [SLIDE 13], pulp writer and unknowing prophet of

the Lord (“The Monster at the End of this Book”). First

introduced in season 4, Shurley is the author of a series of

novels called Supernatural [SLIDE 14]—books that trace the

adventures of Sam and Dean Winchester, two [frighteningly

attractive] brothers who cruise the backroads of America in a ’67

Chevy Impala hunting a never-ending cavalcade of shit that goes

bump in the night. [Right.] Further, Shurley’s novels, like the

Supernatural television series itself, have an active fanbase. As

Sam and Dean discover, the books’ fans take great pleasure in

interacting with, and even altering, the text of what they

believe to be the fictional Winchesters’ lives. To do this, fans

participate in activities that include attending conventions and—

most distressingly of all, in Dean’s eyes at least [SLIDE 15]—

writing gay, incestuous fanfiction featuring the Winchester

brothers.

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Notably, the introduction of Shurley and his Supernatural

novels provided the series’ creatives with a means by which to

represent the show’s fandom within the text of the series itself.

Season 5 introduced Becky Rosen [SLIDE 16], a Supernatural superfan

who writes Wincest fic and is thus thrilled to learn that her

favorite fictional characters are in fact living, [heaving] men

(“Sympathy for the Devil”). [SLIDE 17] In many ways, Becky is a

woman of fannish excess: not only does she possess an

encyclopedic knowledge of the Shurley’s novels, her fan practices

are also marked by emotional and erotic abundance. Ultimately,

her behavior in her first two episodes suggests that she thinks

that just as she can transform the original text of the

Supernatural books through her fanfic, Becky believes that she can

“transform” the real Sam into the love of her life.

While fan reactions to Becky’s initial introduction were

[shall we say?] mixed, they were much less sanguine about her

third appearance in an episode titled “Season Seven: It’s Time

for a Wedding!” Here, Becky’s desire to possess Sam—and thus to

exert authorial control over the Winchesters’ narrative—drives

her to commit crimes against his person. With the help of a

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little demon-juiced Spanish fly, she dupes Sam into marrying her

[SLIDE 18]. When her drug supply runs dry, she knocks Sam

unconscious and drags him to her parents’ remote cabin—where she

promptly removes his pants and ties him spread-eagled to a bed

[SLIDE 19] (“Wedding”). What was initially portrayed as a

humorous—if somewhat misguided—struggle over textual meaning now

reads as attempted rape, wherein Becky poses a clear and present

threat to the integrity of Sam’s body, and to the Winchesters’

story by proxy. Indeed, what makes Becky as a fan dangerous,

“Wedding” implies [SLIDE 20] [with a waffle iron to the head] is

her desire to privilege her interpretation of the text above that

of its creators. In Supernatural, then, Becky embodies the anti-

quality fan. As Coker and Benefiel argue, the narrative implies

that Becky’s overinvestment in Shurley’s novels has inevitably

led to emotional, erotic, and critical excess that no real

person, [not even Sam] can truly fulfill (108) [SLIDE 21]. Thus,

the model of female fandom—of Supernatural fandom—that Becky

represents is one that true fans of the series would be well

served to avoid for fear of not only alienating the series’

creatives but of becoming such “bad” fans themselves.

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While Becky is generally read as a reflection of Supernatural

fandom—the type of fan the show has—we argue that Charlie

Bradbury [SLIDE 22] is presented as a model of the kind of fan

the show wishes it had. A computer hacker with a heart of gold,

Charlie is an unabashed nerd whose character is defined in large

part by her fondness for geek gospels like Lord of the Rings and Star

Wars. She plays video [and tabletop] games, she participates in

Live Action Role Play (LARP), and she collects an impressive

cross-fandom army of figurines and bobbleheads. [SLIDE 23] In

short, she is the embodiment of geek chic. However, unlike Becky,

Charlie is NOT a Supernatural fan—and, as a lesbian, she’s

completely uninterested in sleeping with Sam or Dean. Since

Charlie’s first appearance in season 7, the character has

garnered praise for what many fans have considered a favorable

step forward in fan representation. As Tumblr user

lookatthesefreakinghipsters argues, Charlie “defies the typical

media representation of a woman, of a fan, of a nerd, of a

lesbian. She’s the best type of representation, she’s human

representation.” [SLIDE 24]

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As a character, Charlie represents a very particular kind of

fandom, one that moves away from the sorts of transformational

practices Becky engages in and toward what Scott and others call

“affirmational” behaviors, the types of practices that industrial

interests would like fan/consumers to adopt. Charlie’s fan

practices are centered not on revising the texts that she loves,

but on engaging with their contents—with canon—as is. She wants

to read The Hobbit until its covers are in tatters, not write

Thilbo or Fili/Kili. She wants to get a tattoo of Princess Leia

in a bikini, not write a critical screed about the

hypersexualization of the character in Return of the Jedi. Indeed, in

the episode “Pac-Man Fever,” Charlie’s reluctance to play against

the original story of The Red Scare—the video game world she gets

trapped in—locks her in an endless dream-loop. Only when Dean

intervenes [SLIDE 25] and nudges her to alter the rules of game

is Charlie able to effect their escape.

In fact, Charlie’s relationship with Dean is grounded in a

love of many of the same media texts, be it geek classics like

Star Trek or porn performer Belladonna’s body of work. They share a

common language of fandom, and quote frequently from this mutual

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canon. In this way, Charlie’s fandom is intelligible and thus

unthreatening to Dean, in large part, perhaps, because hers are

fan practices typically marked as male. In “LARP and the Real

Girl,” for example, Charlie helps Dean discover his affinity for

tabletop gaming, cosplay, and even LARPing. Although Dean was

previously dismissive of the LARP adventures of Supernatural fans,

once Charlie introduces him to her version of LARPing [and lets

him wear leather pants], [SLIDE 26] Dean willingly joins in.

Rather than portrayed as silly or fawning, Charlie’s fannish

behavior is coded as something even Dean Winchester can love

[SLIDE 27].

Thus, within the series, Charlie is constructed as a friend

to the text—to the Winchesters’ —not a critic. [SLIDE 28] Unlike

Becky, Charlie displays no interest in interfering with the

brothers’ lives. Indeed, increasingly, her role is to help the

Winchesters continue their own story by accepting roles they

assign her within it. Early on, for example, Charlie behaves as

Dean’s puppet [SLIDE 29], repeating lines he feeds to her via

Bluetooth as she infiltrates enemy territory and, later, acting

as dress-up doll in a quick-change montage [SLIDE 30] during

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which Dean gets veto power over her wardrobe. In her most recent

appearance in season 10’s “There’s No Place Like Home,” the

significance of this trait is suggest by its absence. Here,

Charlie’s personality is literally divided [it’s a long story]

into a good!Charlie [SLIDE 31] who can’t even bring herself to

exercise her hacking skills, and a dark!Charlie [SLIDE 32] who

commits multiple murders and repeatedly beats the shit out of

Dean. What makes dark!Charlie particularly troublesome, however,

is that she won’t listen to [Winchester-flavored] reason: she

does what she wants when she wants, consequences to Sam and Dean

be damned. Only when the two halves of the Charlie-shaped whole

are finally reunited does dark!Charlie’s fury-fueled agency

dissipate; in its place, a wounded and chastened Charlie who is

quick to take up the “help the Winchesters” banner once again.

[SLIDE 33]

Read in the context of Supernatural’s ongoing meta-

conversations with its fandom, the approval that Charlie receives

from the Winchesters [from Dean] for her behaviors marks a kind

of intertextual reward for a particular model of “quality”

fandom. “Good” fans, this model suggests, are celebratory of the

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texts that they love: they are willing to play in the

Winchesters’ world as is, without making substantive changes to

its [heteronormative] rules. Yes, Charlie is a queer character,

but she makes no effort to queer the Supernatural text. Indeed, her

presence raises a key question: as Mel Stanfill puts it, “when

media companies take fans into account, what do they want fans to

do?” Fans are “not simply condemned or tolerated” by corporate

interests, but are “managed, inserted into systems of utility,”

an act Stanfill labels containment. In this case, in return for

playing along with the Winchesters, as it were, Charlie is

accepted into the brothers’ lives as they have never—and would

never—accept Becky. Dean and the text thereby mark Charlie as a

member of the Winchester [read: Supernatural] family; she’s the

“little sister [he] never wanted.” Thus, Charlie represents a

move toward containment via positive reinforcement: love her, be

like her, the text suggests, and you will be loved like her. [SLIDE 34]

Supernatural’s most recent foray into meta in the season 10

episode “Fan Fiction,” we argue, employs a similar tactic, one

that hinges on Dean’s acceptance and eventual approval of a

particular fangirl’s practice. That fangirl is Marie [SLIDE 35],

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a high school student and devoted Supernatural fan whose

unhappiness with the way the novel series ends leads her to write

her own ending: in the form of a musical [SLIDE 36]. Like Becky,

Marie is a diehard Sam!girl and proud author of what she calls

“transformative fiction . . . inspired by” Shurley’s books; indeed,

her musical includes [subtextual] references to both Wincest and

the other big ’ship in Supernatural fandom, Dean/Cas (“Fan

Fiction”). Although Dean is at first [unsurprisingly] [SLIDE 37]

horrified by the prospect of yet another fangirl misinterpreting

his life, he’s eventually won over by what he reads as Marie’s

genuine love for the Winchesters’ story—albeit the one written by

Chuck. Marie’s adoration for Sam, Dean learns, means she wants to

be Sam, to emulate his best qualities, not to tie him to her bed.

Indeed, the inspiration that Marie draws from [fictional] Sam’s

bravery and self-sacrifice proves essential. In the episode’s

climax, Marie gets to play the role of Sam twice over: as a

fictional character in her musical [SLIDE 38] and, after the real

Sam is kidnapped by the monster of the week [of course], as

Dean’s partner in saving the day. Dean endorses both of these

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performances; as he tells her after the monster is slain (to

thunderous applause): “Take a bow, Sammy.”

The episode “Fan Fiction,” however, adds an additional layer

of textual approval to Marie’s practices as a fan: none other

than that of Chuck Shurley, [SLIDE 39] Supernatural’s author [God]

himself. Alluded to as an anonymous publisher interested in

Marie’s script, Marie rushes to meet him at the episode’s

conclusion and asks anxiously, “What did you think?” “Not bad,”

Chuck answers with a benevolent shrug. [And Tumblr goes wild.] On

its face, this feel-good moment reads as fangirl validation: we

used to think maybe they loved us—now, baby, we’re sure. As

Anastasia Salter puts it, “If Becky is Supernatural’s version of

the dangerous and unacceptable fangirl, then Marie is perhaps the

show’s apology for previous wrongs” (forthcoming).

As Louisa Stein argues, however, such feel-good fangirl

shoutouts “are not simply shows of good will or even recognition

of market importance of a devoted audience”; rather, they can be

“tools through which producers attempt to shape and control fan

culture, fan investments, and fan authorship” (406). While much

has been made of the disciplinary nature of Becky’s portrayal

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within the series, we suggest that the seemingly affirmational

models of fandom offered by the show operate in a similar—and

perhaps more insidious—manner. For example, Charlie and Marie

present an easily consumable model of Supernatural fan behavior.

Charlie is now literally in mass-market production [SLIDE 40];

likewise, [SLIDE 41] fans could buy the “fan written” songs from

Marie’s version of Supernatural on iTunes beginning the day after

“Fan Fiction” aired. As Stein points out, “the (imagined) tech

savvy millennial is a highly coveted demographic with supposed

access to disposable income” (Stein). Using this logic, the

courtship of fangirls through the incorporation of “positive” fan

portrayals would seem to ensure a measure of profitability for

the franchise. Fans still basking in the afterglow of the 200th

episode, for example, willingly compete to win online polls

[SLIDE 42] to raise the show’s visibility and pay good money to

attend conventions for their own chance to hang out with the

Winchesters.

Further, as Scott’s discussion of the “quality fan”

suggests, many media overlords seem driven to normalizing fan

practice toward affirmation and fixed meanings of canon. In this

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context, these “fan friendly” presentations of fandom within

Supernatural [SLIDE 43] represent a kind of industrialized

fanfiction. Here, it is the meaning, nature, and practice of the

Supernatural fandom itself that the text is attempting to canonize.

A “good” fan of the series is a young [white] woman, content to

play by the Winchesters’ rules, who attempts to reflect the

show’s best qualities: she wants to be the Winchesters or have a

beer with them, not to fuck them [or watch them fuck each other].

Sure, you can have a little subtext on the side, but in the end,

fans of the series should be driven by love, as Dean Winchester

defines it—one that’s devoid of sexual desire.

What’s notable here is the way in which Supernatural’s

creatives have seemingly wised up: by giving the fans what they

want in terms of representation—fangirls whose practices and

their reception aren’t pathologized but celebrated—they manage to

appear more in touch with the fandom, even while exploiting its

affections. However, what the show’s corporate interests [and

Dean] have failed to acknowledge is that fandom, like desire, is

a Kinsey scale, not a binary. As Paul Booth notes, “The

contemporary mainstreaming of fandom . . . has created a new type

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of fan—one that may identify the dominant ideologies of the

media, but also supports them.” He goes on, “These new fans don’t

replace old fans, but exist in tandem with them, complementing and

working alongside them” [emphasis added] (62). That is, despite

Charlie and Marie’s popularity and the industrial attempts to

install them as “quality” models, Supernatural fandom isn’t just

filled with Beckys, Charlies, or Maries but includes many other

types of fan who don’t resemble them at all [SLIDE 44] [like

Maeve! Marie’s assistant].

This is not to say that Charlie and Marie might appeal only

to real-world fangirls who are “like them,” nor are we

encouraging Supernatural’s creatives to attempt to canonize even

more “types” of fangirl [please god no]. But we think it’s worth

noting that like the semi-mythological “powers that be,” the

field of fan studies [including us!] has, as Booth has suggested,

contributed to delineating what we think a “quality” fan looks

like. As this week’s conversations at SCMS have underscored,

tempting or easy as it might be [and has been] to do otherwise,

we should try to resist writing our own industrialized fanfiction

about who “the fan” is, or who we think [s]he should be. [SLIDE

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45] Granted, the closer that industry tries to pull us as fans,

the harder it can be for us as scholars to push them away. But

searching for connections, collisions, and intersections among

fans themselves, and the cultures within which they move, may

help us to recognize the multiplicity of fan identities at work

even within the body of a single fan, much less within what we

rather misleadingly call “a fandom” itself. [SLIDE 46] Embracing

this messiness, this unfixedness of fan identity, may even lead

to unexpected mashups—like, say, [SLIDE 47] Becky/Charlie slash

fic, or Dean/musical theatre.

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Works Cited

Booth, Paul. “Saw Fandom and the Trangression of Fan Excess.” Trangression 2.0: Media, Culture, and the Politics of a Digital Age. Ed. Ted Gournelos and David J. Gunkel. New York: Continuum, 2012. 62-83. Print.

Coker, Cait and Benefiel, Candace. “The Hunter Hunted: The Portrayal of Fan as Predator in Supernatural.” Supernatural, Humanity, and the Soul: On the Highway to Hell and Back. Ed. Susan A. George and Regina M. Hansen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 97- 110. Print.

“The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo.” Supernatural: The Complete Seventh Season. Writ. Robbie Thompson. Dir. John MacCarthy. CBS, 2012. DVD.

“LARP and the Real Girl.” Supernatural: The Complete Eighth Season. Writ.Robbie Thompson. Dir. Jeannot Szwarc. CBS, 2013. DVD.

lookatthosefreakinghipsters. “I think of all the moments between Dorothy and Charlie.” Tumblr. November 2013. Web.

“The Monster At The End Of This Book.” Supernatural: The Complete FourthSeason. Writ. Eric Kripke and Julie Siege. Dir. Mark Rahl. CBS, 2009. DVD.

“Pac Man Fever.” Supernatural: The Complete Eighth Season. Writ. Robbie Thompson. Dir. Robert Singer. CBS, 2013. DVD.

“The Real Ghostbusters.” Supernatural: The Complete Fifth Season. Writ. Eric Kripke. Dir. James L. Conway. CBS, 2009. DVD.

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Romano, Aja. “Why fans have high hopes (but low expectations) forSupernatural.” The Daily

Dot. 19 May 2014. Web.

Salter, Anastasia. “It’s Not Just Subtext: Constructing the Fan Girl as Subject and Creator in Supernatural.” 2015. Conference Presentation Proposal.

“Season 7: It’s Time For A Wedding!” Supernatural. Writ. Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin. Dir. Tim Andrew. CBS, 2011. DVD.

Scott, Suzanne. “Walking the Talk: Enunciative Fandom and Fan Studies’ ‘Industrial Turn.’” Society for Culture and Media Studies Conference. Seattle, WA. 21 March2014. Conference Presentation.

Stanfill, Mel. “‘The Fan’ as/in Industry Discourse.” Society for Culture and Media Studies Conference. Seattle, WA. 21 March 2014. Conference Presentation.

Stein, Louisa. “#Bowdown to Your New God: Misha Collins and Decentered Authorship in the Digital Age.” A Companion to Media Authorship. Ed. Jonathan Gray andDerek Johnson. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. 403-425. Print.

“Sympathy for the Devil.” Supernatural: The Complete Fifth Season. Writ. Eric Kripke. Dir. Robert Singer. CBS, 2010. DVD.

“There’s No Place Like Home.” Supernatural. WWCW, Roanoke. 11 February 2015.

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Television.