Category: Supernatural Cast and Crew

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:

 

Creation Supernatural Convention Kansas City 2022

Creation Supernatural Convention Kansas City 2022

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It’s been a busy couple of months! It’s almost Thanksgiving as I write this, and I’m finally trying to catch up on Supernatural convention posts – first up, Kansas City Con!

Three days after getting back from the Supernatural convention at Denver, I headed blearily to the airport again on Thursday night to fly to the next one in Kansas City. I’d never been there, and there had never been a convention there, so that was exciting – enough to keep me awake at least. My lovely roommates had a delicious burger and fries waiting for me, so that helped too. So did a good night’s sleep!

I am rarely able to be at a con on Friday morning, so it was a treat to get to see Gabe Tigerman’s panel. Gabe has a chapter in There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done, and he’s also part of our earliest books, both Fangasm Supernatural Fangirls and Fandom At The Crossroads, so it made me all kinds of happy to catch up with him.  A fan asked what he would do if he had mind control like his character, Andy?

Gabe: I’d do the same thing he did – steal Baby!

Favorite line?

Gabe: I have an evil twin! Though I wish it was identical twins so it could be like me fighting me with a mustache.

Like so many guest actors on the show, Gabe said that Supernatural was his favorite job.

Gabe: As guest actors on that show, we really got to act – and then do these conventions!

He wishes Andy didn’t have to die, because it made so much sense for Sam and Dean to just take Andy’s van and go hunting with him.

I was extra thrilled to hear him tell the infamous 5-legged steer story, about the time he and some buddies went to see the world’s largest groundhog and found it stuffed – and then were chased by a cow with a whole ass extra leg hanging off its side!

He also told the story of him fanboying Michael C Hall at a restaurant, and taking out his Invisalign at the exact moment that Hall walked by and said hello, so that Gabe looked up at him with a spit string attached to his Invisalign hahaha.

Gabe took an informal poll of how many times people in the audience had watched Supernatural start to finish – the winner was 35!!

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Julian Richings too – only in the Supernatural fandom does Death exuberantly take the stage like this!

Read more →

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