Category: Fandom News

Happy Birthday Sam Winchester!

Happy Birthday Sam Winchester!

spnfans

This past week has been good for my soul.

My Supernatural loving soul, that is. The fandom designated it #SamWinchesterWeek, which meant my timelines have been filled with all kinds of posts about all our favorite things about Sam Winchester – leading up to today, Sam’s 40th birthday!

The fandom started with favorite Sam-centric episodes, which included some of the classics and some you might not expect – Just My Imagination, After School Special, Sacrifice, When the Levee Breaks, Soul Survivor, Mystery Spot, and two of my personal favorites, Red Meat and Born Under A Bad Sign.

Just looking through the episode caps on the timeline makes clear what an incredible, nuanced character Sam Winchester is, and how brilliantly Jared Padalecki portrayed him.

Next the fandom moved on to a cascade of Sam’s funniest moments that showcased Padalecki’s incredible comedic chops. He has sometimes said he finds comedy hard and doesn’t think he’s that good at it – clearly we all beg to differ!

My personal favorite is the lock and key bad acting scene from The French Mistake, which I literally cannot watch without laughing out loud, even now when I’ve seen it so many times.

But there are so many others.

One of the things that made Supernatural the amazing show it was is that Jared, Jensen, Misha and the rest of the cast were capable of such a range in their acting. They could break your hearts, but they could also make you laugh with just a look, just an expression.

gifs annazima, absolutelyneedy
gifs annazima, clairvoyant sam, abordelimpala

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A Letter from Ukraine: The SPNFamily and AlwaysKeepFighting

A Letter from Ukraine: The SPNFamily and AlwaysKeepFighting

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I wanted to put together a book with chapters by the Supernatural actors and fans about what the show has meant to them and how it has inspired them to get through some difficult times, because over the years I’ve heard so many incredible stories of what the show and the fandom have meant to people – actors and fans alike. A little while ago, I got an email from Iryna, who is risking her life every day to help evacuate people from war-torn Ukraine. Her sister gave her a copy of Family Don’t End With Blood and she wrote that Supernatural and the stories in that book have inspired her to #AlwaysKeepFighting and been a source of support during an unimaginably difficult time.

I’m always incredibly touched when people say that one of the books has helped them, but Iryna’s story really struck me, so I thought I’d share it here. There may be lots of disagreements among fans, a fact that sometimes leaves me discouraged, but the fact remains that Supernatural has been something special and it continues to be. Iryna’s email was a reminder of that, and of what’s really important. I’m so grateful to all the people who wrote chapters in Family Don’t End With Blood , from Jared, Jensen and Misha to longtime fans to new fans who fell in love later in the show’s run. Look at the difference you made, and are still making. Thank you to all of you for sharing your stories (and to the Show that has kept so many people going through whatever comes along, just like the Winchesters).

And if you are reading this and feeling like you need some support and inspiration right now too, maybe Iryna’s email will be that source of inspiration for you.

#AlwaysKeepFighting

Here are some excerpts from Iryna’s story:

Yesterday I finished reading your book Family Don’t End with Blood: Cast and Fans on How Supernatural Has Changed Lives and decided to write you a letter. Well, to be honest I decided to do that, when I was starting to read it.

My name is Iryna and I live in Ukraine. You may know that there is war in Ukraine now. And it’s not like we see it in movies. It is really horrible. I`m very lucky to live in the more or less safe city, but it was also attacked by enemies and people died. I work in the charity foundation and every day help evacuate people… In one of the first episodes of Supernatural (The Benders) Dean said, that monsters can at least be understood — their actions are logical, people’s — not. And it’s really so.

On the eve of February 24, 2022, I had a completely normal life. I studied at a Documentary film school, worked in a team of screenwriters on a family Christmas story, improved my skills as a director of editing and motion design, and made some documentary photo projects, I had a lot of friends. But in one moment all changed. My future became ghostly and shaky.

A new life with the sounds of explosions and air raid sirens, often lasting without electricity after massive attacks, began. The lectures at a film school were stopped, and a lot of my friends left our country. But I still stay. I often joke that it’s because I’ve watched and rewatched Supernatural so many times that now I always keep fighting and not giving up. Although it is very difficult.

To support me, my sister, who is now forced to stay with my little niece in another country, sent me your book, because she knows very well how much I adore this show. She suddenly saw it in the local library. Maybe it was a sign? I’ve read it during air raids, I’ve read it when I came home from a hard workday, I’ve read it by flashlight and candlelight during electricity outages due to massive missile attacks on critical infrastructure.

Even though I’ve been watching Supernatural since 2016, I’ve never been a part of the Supernatural family, even though I knew about it. But now the stories of all the heroes of the book inspired and supported me a lot. It makes me very happy to know that there is such a large community, that people find support in it, that they are not alone. Even the awareness of this supports in a difficult time. I am very grateful to you for the decision to create this book. It is very supportive. All the stories are very sincere and inspiring. I hope that all the heroes will be fine.

Thank you, the community, and Supernatural.

It was a great time.

Best wishes,

Iryna

 

Thank you, Iryna. When I feel down about fandom infighting or missing the Show, I’m going to re-read this and remember how special Supernatural and the SPNFamily are – and always will be.

–Lynn

You can find the books, if you need some

inspiration right now too, at the website:

Happy birthday, Dean Winchester!

Happy birthday, Dean Winchester!

spnfans

This is the third January 24th without Supernatural, and yes, I still miss Dean Winchester. No one – no fictional character – has taken his place in my heart or captured my imagination like Dean did.

I honestly don’t think anyone ever will.

I’m very grateful there are still lots of other people who miss Dean too, and are celebrating his birthday. It’s been Dean Winchester birthday week on Tumblr and Twitter, with amazing gif sets and photos and fans posting about why they love him, from his most endearing personality traits to his most unforgettable outfits. I love seeing how important Dean is to so many people, how many people’s lives he touched in his fifteen years of “existence”.

I’ve written many many times about why I love Dean, from his loyalty and love for family and friends and especially his little brother, to his fierceness when any of those are threatened. He wasn’t always one to talk about his feelings, but Dean didn’t shy away from showing affection to those he cared about.

I love his little boyish delight in so many simple things too – when he’s making up new names for monsters and unrepentantly proud of it or sneaking a chance to climb into the ring and pretend to be a wrestling champion just for the fun of it.

The joy he got from getting to dress up, whether it was for a trip back to the Old West or be a nerd for the day, or to put on a tux and pretend to not want to be objectified.

He found happiness in all sorts of simple things, from the treat of a good burger or a delicious slice of pie to a night off to sit on the hood of the Impala with Sam and watch the stars. From a chance to live the normal suburban life for a day and mow your mother’s lawn to the pure joy of roaring down the road in his Baby, his brother beside him.

I love his strength, but I also love the fact that Jensen Ackles showed us his tenderness and vulnerability,  that he let the sadness he felt in the face of overwhelming loss bring tears that he wasn’t ashamed to let fall.

I love his bowlegs and his impossibly long eyelashes and the freckles sprinkled across his handsome face and his green eyes that people wax poetic about in fanfic.

Honestly, there’s not much I don’t love about Dean Winchester.

Except that he and Supernatural are not on my screen every week.

This past season, we’ve seen some little glimpses of Dean on ‘The Winchesters’ and heard his voice every week as he narrates the new mission he’s on to figure out his parents’ past. It’s not the same as having the Winchester brothers back on Supernatural and back together again, but I don’t think that was the point. The point was keeping the world of Supernatural alive, and our glimpses of Dean help anchor that universe, in another time and perhaps another space. We’ll see him again soon it seems, and maybe get some answers about why he’s there and not in Heaven hanging out with Sam and driving around in Baby.

We’ve also heard Jensen and Jared talk about how much they want to bring back “OG Supernatural” with a revival, which never fails to leave me sitting there grinning and crossing every finger and toe I have hoping that happens. Every time they say it at a convention, the room erupts in cheers, and I can see them drink it in, thinking hmmm, maybe. I know they want to do it; I’m just hoping the insane network landscape right now allows it at some point in the not too distant future. Until then, I’ll enjoy the glimpses of Dean on The Winchesters and keep rewatching the 15 seasons of Supernatural that we were so damn lucky to get.

Take care of him, Jensen, until Sam and Dean are back to ‘saving people, hunting things’ and it seems all is right with the world once again.

Happy birthday, Dean Winchester!

Gifs by green circles, abordelimpala, heytheredean, sasquatchandleatherjacket, mooselys, mishha, itsokaysammy, elainamarie89

–Lynn

You can read Jensen and Jared and Misha’s

(and many more cast) thoughts on their

characters and Supernatural in Family

Don’t End With Blood and There’ll Be Peace

When You Are Done – info and links at:

 

Happy Two Year Finale Anniversary, Supernatural!

Happy Two Year Finale Anniversary, Supernatural!

spnfans

Last year on November 19 I wrote a post about the one year anniversary of my favorite show of all time, Supernatural, coming to an end. I was relieved that the fandom had survived the year since the show’s finale, and that there was still a vibrant active fan community – the week leading up to this date was full of celebration, photos, gifs, memes all about the finale and the show. I wrote then that I was so grateful – and that I wondered if that would still be the case a year later, on the two year anniversary of the series finale.

That’s today.

I am still grateful. Grateful that I had 327 episodes of this Show I love so much, and that it got to have its finale even in the midst of a global pandemic that disrupted literally everything. Supernatural has always been about ‘always keep fighting’ and pushing through, no matter how difficult the circumstances, and they did.

Some things don’t change – I am still as in love with the show and the characters as I was two years ago. The fandom has persisted, albeit with less activity (and maybe a little bit less infighting – the one silver lining of less activity). I am so glad that I have so many fandom friends who still love the show as much as I do.

Some things do change, as much as I don’t want them to. There wasn’t the big cross-platform celebration of the show in the week leading up to the anniversary that there was last year. Twitter itself, the platform on which I mostly make my fannish home and spend time with my fellow fans, is teetering on the abyss of ending too, driven into the ground by a new owner who seems determined to ruin what made it so useful, and occasionally wonderful.

Who knows if the Supernatural fandom as it has existed for the past 17 years will ever exist that way again if the platform does disappear, with so many using Twitter as a platform for both fandom and for interacting with the actors who brought Supernatural to life. It feels like we may be at the end of an era – and doesn’t it just make sense that we’re standing on this precipice on the exact anniversary of Supernatural ending. How fitting is that? Supernatural has always been unprecedented, oddly tied to other major shifts in the broader culture. Why would that change now?

Sam and Dean went through alot during those fifteen seasons we were privileged to witness. They grew up alot, and they came a long way. We have all done the same.

The last year has also brought other changes – the most striking one, the launch of the Supernatural prequel, The Winchesters, with executive producers Jensen and Danneel Ackles and former Supernatural writer Robbie Thompson. The series has been a way to keep the SPN universe alive and explore its characters’ history, but it has also been controversial. We still don’t know the full story that The Winchesters is telling, so it remains to be seen how the prequel will impact the fandom or canon or the chances of a reboot of Supernatural itself going forward. For me, it’s a separate show with its own story arcs, very different than OG Supernatural – but I’m enjoying watching it as a separate entity.

Supernatural conventions have continued unchanged for the past year, but the Creation conventions will change next year, no longer “the Official Supernatural Conventions” but “Creation Cons” including Supernatural and “other J & J projects”. It remains to be seen what exactly that will change, but just having them not be official Supernatural conventions feels weirdly like a loss to me, a forever Supernatural fan. Not that having some guests from other projects won’t be fun – I watch Walker and The Boys and Big Sky and Walker Independence already and love them, with Gotham Knights coming up soon – but I still feel like not having “official” Supernatural conventions as we have for the past 14 years is some kind of vague loss. (I hate change, my not-exactly-neurotypical brain just balks, what can I say?)

The past year has also given the actors more chance to reflect on the show and the journeys of their characters, in interviews and at conventions. Misha has talked about how important Castiel’s last scene was to him personally. Jared and Jensen have talked about how much their last scenes meant to them, both the painfully real ‘barn scene’ that gave them the opportunity to do some of the most powerful acting I’ve ever witnessed as well as the deep satisfaction of ‘normal’ life in the bunker for a while and the joyous reunion on the bridge.

Fandom remains divided over loving or hating the finale, and everyone’s personal opinion is valid, but Jared and Jensen and Misha are all happy and very proud of their final episodes.

And that is perhaps the most important thing of all.

If you haven’t read them yet, the Supernatural actors shared their personal thoughts about how the show has changed their lives in the book ‘Family Don’t End With Blood’ and their feelings on their characters and Supernatural’s legacy in ‘There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done’. They’re both on sale at amazon right now, if you want a written remembrance of just how special this show will always be – to both the fandom and the cast. The website to order is below in the banner if you want a tangible way to remember Supernatural and its amazing actors and fans.

I may have to do a little rewatching of my favorite show of all time  this weekend too, which I will never ever get tired of. And I’m hoping Twitter is still around for me to enjoy other fans’ celebrating there and on Tumblr and everywhere else we all gather today.

I’m so grateful to still have something I love so much, even if it hurt alot to lose it – hopefully temporarily! (That’s what Jensen says in ‘There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done’ so who am I not to listen to him??)

Happy Two Year Anniversary, Supernatural Series Finale!

With love, forever,

Lynn

Happy 40th Birthday Jared Padalecki!

Happy 40th Birthday Jared Padalecki!

spnfans

It has been a wonderful week of celebrating Jared Padalecki’s birthday for his fans – every day was a different hashtag so we could highlight something else, from photos and videos of Jared with other celebrities, or exercising, or smiling, or with pets, to his best performances and fans’ favorite photos. The hashtag #JaredPadaleckiWeek trended all week long, and my timeline was full of good feelings and positive posts and it felt like all the best things about fandom.

Then the week got even better – Jared popped onto twitter, shocking the fandom as he enjoys doing, to shine some light on a teacher trying to get ready for the next school year and without funding for things her students needed. So many teachers have a list of needed supplies that they often have to spend their own money to get, so #ClearTheList was a call to action for anyone who wanted to help. And help the fans did! People retweeted, donated, sent messages of support. Jared hopped on and thanked fans for the help, and then later in the week highlighted another person in need of help for a very sick cat, once again shining a light that allowed others to help if they could. The collective endorphins that we get from being able to help others just added to the good feelings already there, and made this a really special week.

When I started putting this post together, it was because I’d been reminded of some of my favorite Jared performances over the years. He has brought so much joy to so many of us, first as Sam Winchester and now as Cordell Walker, so I do want to post a few of those moments. But this week also reminded me that I value so many things about Jared that aren’t about what he does for a living. He’s a good soul who genuinely wants to help others – we saw that again this past week. More about that in a minute – but first let’s look back at a few of those performances that really demonstrate Jared’s powerful acting.

The first one that came to mind was one of the two episodes that made me fall in love with Supernatural, ‘Born Under A Bad Sign’.

I’d been watching, but I wasn’t head over heels, and then there were a few episodes in a row in Season 2 that just blew me out of the water. Jared’s performance as Sam possessed by Meg was one of those things that made me realize just how special Supernatural is. He was somehow so NOT Jared, not sweet smart caring Sam Winchester – he had an edge to him, evil, sadistic, insecure. Those scenes with Alona Tal as Jo and then with Jensen Ackles as Dean tries to exorcise his brother were breathtaking. Literally.

The second Supernatural episode I thought about was another opportunity for Jared to play a different version of Sam, this time as Lucifer’s vessel in ‘The End’. It’s a short scene, but it’s one of the most memorable in the entire series, Jared making Lucifer absolutely terrifying without ever raising his voice or appearing angry at all. His soft spoken manner nevertheless radiates horrible power, his almost affectionate oh-you-poor-thing reaction to Dean’s tearful resistance enough to turn my stomach. Jensen has talked about how blown away HE was by Jared’s performance, and it came through powerfully on screen too.

There are lots of other great acting moments in the fifteen years of Supernatural, but a few from the later seasons stand out too. One is from ‘Red Meat’, one of my favorite episodes of the entire series – largely because of Jared’s incredible acting. From the moment that Sam gets shot, he makes you believe how much agony Sam is in, and at the same time, makes his almost superhuman persistence believable too. His every facial expression, his every bodily movement, radiates the pain he’s feeling and the struggle it is just to keep going, and that makes the episode one of the most compelling of the series. It literally hurts to watch – and yet I love it.

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