Reconstruction Vol. 11, No. 4
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Wincest is the Best, or, Raep is What Happens When You Say No: Subversive Humor and Serious Business in Capslock Supernatural / Britt Eira Long
"Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously." —Donna Haraway
"I don't want any smart-ass article making fun of my boys." —Supernatural
<1> In the fifth season of the television series Supernatural, demon-hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) investigate a haunted hotel. The episode, "The Real Ghostbusters," "features a dour legend, a graveyard, a hidden map, and an unfortunate tourist who is scalped by the ghosts of murdered children. Standard fare for this cult series, except that the hotel Sam and Dean are investigating is also hosting a Supernatural fan convention, complete with discussion panels (including The Homoerotic Subtext of Supernatural"), live-action role-playing (LARPing, Supernatural merchandise, and elaborate character costumes. The episode demonstrates the varied and competing interpretations of the series among fans as well as the series producers, particularly regarding "Wincest ": a non-canonical sexual and/or romantic relationship between the Winchester brothers that is one of the most popular genres of Supernatural fanworks.[1] As I will show, "Wincest" "is the mobile signifier that defines the distinct branches of the Supernatural fan community and their complex relationships to each other. Supernatural is the first canon text of any kind to portray its fans and their fantasies directly not a sly reference, but a dramatic and undeniable (if biased) full frontal. This series, and the unique fan culture that has developed around it, deserve critical attention for this unprecedented dialogue between source text [2] and fanworks.
<2> The study of fanworks and the source texts that are subverted and reinvented through fan production is an emergent field, and new avenues for exploration and analysis are constantly appearing. [3] I will address two such avenues here: the significance and influence of capslock communities within online fandoms, and the television series Supernatural. Capslock communities in which all posts and comments are typed with the Caps Lock key on "are unique spaces within fan communities which have heretofore been neglected by critics of fan studies. Through the livejournal community capslock_spn (CLSPN), [4] I will present an overview of capslock communities: how they work and why they are a crucial component of online fandoms. I will also establish the intensely interreferential dialogue between the producers of the television series Supernatural, the mainstream (non-capslock) Supernatural fandom, and CLSPN in the first five seasons of the series (2005-2010).
<3> The Supernatural fandom is triangulated into three competing yet cooperative branches by the Wincest taboo " and its inherent questions of sexuality, authority, and legitimacy. The series producers acknowledge the homoerotic subtext of Supernatural but insist that Wincest is an invalid, if humorous, interpretation of the series. Mainstream Supernatural fans produce fan fiction, fanvids, and other fanworks which celebrate Wincest as a legitimate reading of the series. CLSPN abandons consensual Wincest in favor of rape: a dramatic overidentification which actually endorses the logic of Supernatural's canon producers while rejecting the established feedback loop between canon producers and mainstream (non-capslock) fans. Simply put, my project is to discuss how Wincest is represented by fans of the text as well as by the text itself. I will map these representations across online fan communities in addition to relevant episodes from the series.
<4> Fans and texts speak to each other in a complex fashion, and fanworks contribute meaning to the text in dramatic and sometimes unexpected ways. It is therefore imperative that fanworks be discussed in relation to their source texts. An important aspect of this project, and of other projects that may unfold along the same lines, is to locate the sites of convergence between these incestuous media. Identifying a new and unprecedented site of media convergence is potentially to identify a new kind of text, a hybrid species whose author and audience are increasingly and intriguingly confused. Matt Hills, in his landmark book Fan Cultures (2002), stresses the importance of establishing a "general theory of media fandom" to account for the points of intersection and communication between fan-generated texts and what he refers to a"the wider consumption patterns that surround, and may help to make some sense of, their fan activities (Hills, 2) including, of course, the source text.
<5> Although it does not focus on fanworks, Jonathan Gray's recent book Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (2010) emphasizes the importance of a paratextual approach to media studies: "Each proliferation [of a text], after all, holds the potential to change the meaning of the text, if only slightly " (Gray, 2). Fan communities and fanworks function not unlike the "spin-offs and other paratexts on which Gray focuses: they are capable of creating and modifying meaning within an existing text. "Taking the eye off the paratext, as media studies has often done, "he argues"impoverishes our understanding of production and regulation cultures, and hence our ability to intervene meaningfully in these cultures" (Gray, 16). Show Sold Separately is, in its author's words, neither about fan cultures nor not about them; it instead aims to make sense of the textual residue that often flows between all audiences (Gray, 17). This paper will, I hope, identify and explore a new audience (capslock fans) as well as the unprecedented dialogue between source text and fanworks that characterizes Supernatural and its textual residues.
I
Control the Capslock, Control the Internet
<6> Capslock communities, like other online fan communities, are generally organized around the production and consumption of fanworks, but they are also distinct in several ways. First, and most obviously, all posts to a capslock community must be typed in uppercase "that is, with the Caps Lock key on. Many capslock communities impose penalties on users who post in lowercase, [5] which is often referred to as losercase. "Typing in all caps is considered the online equivalent of shouting: that is, typing in capslock is associated with heavy emphasis, aggression, and general rudeness. [6] Capslock communities enthusiastically flout this convention. Their use of the Caps Lock key is the most obvious and iconic example of these communities' aggressive indifference to conventions of every kind. Unlike many online fan communities, every post to a capslock community is meant to be funny. Capslock communities are unique spaces within fandom in which nothing need be taken seriously. Capslock_friday, a nonfan community on livejournal, is widely acknowledged as the first capslock community.[7] Since my interests are fan-related, however, I will center my exploration and analysis of capslock communities on capslock_spn (CLSPN), the livejournal community dedicated to the television series Supernatural (2005).[8]
<7> Supernatural is an hour-long television drama about Sam and Dean Winchester, two brothers who travel the country hunting demons, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural beings. The brothers were raised by their father, John (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who began hunting supernatural creatures after a demon killed his wife. Each episode is centered on a "monster of the week" and features a self-contained plot. The episodes are also connected by an annual narrative arc that deals with the consequences of the Winchesters" unconventional lifestyle. [9] Supernatural premiered on the CW network in 2005 "the same year that capslock_friday was established on livejournal. The premiere of the television series Supernatural therefore coincides with an attitudinal shift in how controversial issues are discussed in online fan communities.[9]
<8> In spite of the obviously humorous tone of CLSPN, the community operated within the canonical structures of Supernatural to a much greater extent than the rest of the fandom. Even as CLSPN appeared to subvert the logic of the series with its absurd and confrontational content, it reaffirmed the dominance of the canon text. These three branches of the fan community "canon producers, mainstream fans, and CLSPN "are simultaneously connected and separated by the Wincest phenomenon, just as Sam and Dean are simultaneously connected and separated by the incest taboo.
<9> CLSPN treated topics that are traditionally taken very seriously by online fan communities with an aggressive irreverence that outsiders [10] find offensive and unsettling. These issues included racism, misogyny, homophobia, and sexual abuse including rape and incest. The humor (some insist on "humor") of CLSPN was characterized by irony, long-running in-jokes whose origin and meaning are peculiar to the community, and an enthusiastic disrespect for political correctness or simple good manners. Fanlore.org noted that CLSPN also appropriated running jokes from other capslock communities and made humorous references to celebrities and pop culture events not directly connected to Supernatural (fanlore.org, November 2009). For these reasons, CLSPN was a disorienting space for outsiders as well as members who had not been reading posts and comments consistently. CLSPN was also visually unsettling, from members' icons to the macros and manips they post. This disorienting layout is typical of capslock communities. Capslock_house, for instance, features a background of violently flashing colors that is literally painful to see, and community members may use icons that do the same, making the page physically challenging to navigate.
<10> Before moving to a more detailed discussion of CLSPN, I want to summarize what I consider the shaping forces behind capslock communities. The community Fandom Wank appeared on livejournal in 2002. Its purpose was to poke fun at dramatic public arguments and other objectionable behavior within fandoms, including plagiarism and character-bashing. In 2003, Fandom Wank (having been deleted from livejournal) was reconstituted on journalfen. In 2007, the journalfen community Unfunnybusiness was established in reaction to Fandom Wank. Although posts to Unfunnybusiness need not relate to fandom, the main purpose of the community is to seriously acknowledge and discuss issues that arise in fandom. The founding principle of Unfunnybusiness is that some things are simply not funny. Certain controversial social issues are taken seriously enough to be excluded, by general agreement and often by written rule, from communities like Fandom Wank where the main purpose is humorous entertainment. For instance, fans of Supernatural continue to be troubled by the series's portrayal of women and people of color. These issues would be treated seriously on Unfunnybusiness. In its stub on Unfunnybusiness, fanlore.org notes that the assertion that some topics simply aren't funny represents a fairly major shift in opinion on the part of the Fandom Wank crowd, that occurred somewhere around 2005"(fanlore.org, November 2009). This is the attitudinal shift that created a space for communities like CLSPN.
<11> The assumption that serious issues deserve serious attention is obviously not universal. On its public profile page, Unfunnybusiness describes itself as the sober side of wank "and insists that "sometimes, the internet is srs bsness [serious business"](Unfunnybusiness, November 2009). For the sake of comparison, consider that Fandom Wank describes its purpose as,"Mock. Mockmockmock. Mockity-mockity-mock because we think 'Fandom is Fucking Funny' is not taking it far enough" (Fandom Wank, November 2009). While this guiding philosophy might seem in keeping with the tone of CLSPN, the latter charged cheerfully into areas that Fandom Wank clearly prohibits. Fandom Wank, unlike CLSPN, is a public community: anyone can join without being approved by the community moderators, and non-members can read all posts. In its rules, Fandom Wank specifies that its members must"behave" "Do not troll people who show up on FW. We are here to laugh at them, not fight with them (Fandom Wank, November 2009). Furthermore, Fandom Wank members are specifically prohibited from "trolling or flooding FW itself:" Trolling means spamming other entries with totally unrelated topics, flooding any entry with dozens or hundreds of comments with no content or the same, repeated content, or generally being obnoxious deliberately" (Fandom Wank, November 2009). Even a cursory glance at CLSPN made it clear that generally being obnoxious deliberately" seemed to be the point of the community. Furthermore, the rules governing CLSPN (some of which I have cited in footnotes) emphasized that while personal attacks on fellow community members were discouraged,"PEOPLE IN OTHER COMMUNITIES ARE FAIR GAME."
<12> CLSPN drew much of its humor from the incestuous fanship between Sam and Dean Winchester, but this pairing is popular in the Supernatural fandom as a whole. Fiction posted to CLSPN was more likely to involve one brother raping the other. In most rape fics posted to CLSPN, the traumatic nature of rape was never seriously acknowledged. The overwhelming tone of the fics was hilarity. [11] Ship, from relationship, refers to a romantic and/or sexual pairing between two characters that may or may not be canon. The Sam/Dean ship is known as Wincest, which is a play on the brothers' surname as well as on the familiar internet convention of using win/fail "to mean"good/bad." Real person slash (R)PS[113 was also a familiar feature of CLSPN. Rather than writing fiction about Sam and Dean Winchester, members of CLSPN often wrote fiction about Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki. RPS is by no means unique to CLSPN, but the community's information page acknowledged that RPS is distasteful to many fans: WE LIKE WINCEST AND RPS AND ALL SORTS OF FUCKED-UP STUFF HERE SO IF YOU DON'T THEN DEAL WITH IT OR GTFO [Get the fuck out](CLSPN, November 2009).
<13> As I have mentioned, CLSPN was visually alienating. Macros and manips were commonly posted to CLSPN, and many of these were sexually explicit enough to require a cut: a link that readers must click in order to see hidden content. (CLSPN required that its members hide episode spoilers as well as pornographic fics and images.) On CLSPN, manips were often executed with deliberate clumsiness in order to highlight the silliness of the altered image. Polls were also common on CLSPN, such as one from November 2009 concerning the announcement of Padalecki's engagement, which came shortly after Ackles announced his engagement. The first question on the poll was, THIS ENGAGEMENT AND ITS TIMING IS..." The possible answers included "SUSPICIOUS,"COINCIDENCE, "A DISTRACTION FROM THE GAY," and "A POOR DISTRACTION FROM THE GAY." The last two answers were by far the most popular (CLSPN, November 2009). The text of CLSPN was terrifically self-contained; any appreciation or understanding of the aforementioned jokes requires extensive background information and explanation. This is true for nonfans almost as much as for non-capslock Supernatural fans. Livejournal users can tag their posts in order to enable searching and organization within a community or a personal journal. The post popular tags in CLSPN included, "ALL TAGS ARE LOSERCASE, "BEARDS, "CAPSLOCK IS FULL OF LAZY ASS BITCHES" (a reaction to members' increasingly infrequent posts, a trend that eventually resulted in the deletion of the community) `, COMPLETELY HETEROSEXUAL, "PEENDANCE (penance "for posting in lowercase), "PORN," "RAEP," "SRS BSNS," and "THIS PLOT POINT IS GAY" (CLSPN, July 2010). Other tags included "CAN'T BE UNSEEN" (a reference to the frequently disturbing and alienating nature of visual posts) and "I'LL TAG YOU IN THE BUTT WITH MY DICK." This emphasis on sex underlines what I see as the primary motivation for producing fanworks: to see one's own desires represented, even hyperbolically or light-heartedly, in the text. Such desires are not always sexual, of course, but in a humor-oriented community like CLSPN, and in a television series that relies heavily on the sexual appeal of its cast, sexual jokes and sexual desires are inevitably central to fan discourse.
<14> I cite these posts, tags, and fanworks to establish the unique subjectivity of a capslock community, and of CLSPN in particular. Playfulness and irreverence characterize many fan communities and many forms of fan behavior, of course, but the "auto-context " (to borrow a term from Hills) of CLSPN deserves particular attention and differentiation. Paul Booth, in Digital Fandom: New Media Studies (2010), identifies a "philosophy of playfulness" in fan behavior, a tendency to understand fannish interventions as part of "a larger media game (Booth, 2). He sees the fan-driven practice of alternate reality gaming (ARGing) as symptomatic of this text-as-game, user-as-player perspective. CLSPN, and the Supernatural fandom more generally, certainly exercise this approach: the LARPing scenario in The Real Ghostbusters "represents one level of fannish play, while the episode itself, with its complex self-referentiality, constitutes another, deeper level of playfulness, of competitive give-and-take between Supernatural and its fans. The gameplay aspect of fanworks and fan behavior is another means by which fans "regularly transgress the boundaries of the original text" by "participating in some way with the creation of meanings from extant media events" (Booth, 2). Following Raymond Williams, Booth describes new media texts such as fanworks as cultural processes: dialogues capable of shaping and reshaping a text and a series of communities around that text.
<15> Hills (2002) has argued that it is important to view fans as players in the sense that they become immersed in non-competitive [13] and affective play" (Hill, 112) Hill's view of play accounts for the emotional attachment of the fan to the source text and suggests that"play is not always caught up in a pre-established boundedness or set of cultural boundaries, but may instead imaginatively create its own set of boundaries and its own auto-context (Hills, 112). Hills concludes: "Fans create the conventions that they attend (to), through subjective and affective play (Hills, 112). CLSPN created its own set of boundaries through its exhaustive and rigidly-enforced list of rules many of which, perhaps paradoxically, were designed to maintain CLSPNs freedom to flout the conventions of other fan communities, not to mention the conventions of typography, spelling, and grammar. The playfulness of CLSPN, far from being caught up in a pre-established boundedness, seemed on the surface to hyperconsciously rebel against any sense of boundedness or inhibition, even as its obsessively insular and tightly-controlled discourse revealed a new system of boundedness and faithfulness to the source text.
II Canon/Fanon
<16> Fans and those familiar with fan studies will know that it's not uncommon to see some dialogue between fanworks and canon texts. Jamie McNellis, who has been active in the Harry Potter fandom for more than a decade, says that many fans feel that J.K. Rowling wrote the epilogue to the seventh and final book in a deliberate effort to assert her authority over the text. As I have suggested, one of the most basic and popular ways for a fan to engage with a text is to root for a relationship between two (or more) characters. "Shipping "can be a dynamic and divisive force in fandoms: fans argue passionately for the logic and/or appeal of their ship, and an enormous amount of fan fiction centers on certain pairings. [14] In the Harry Potter fandom, many fans advocated (and continue to advocate, Rowling's everybody-out-of-the-water epilogue notwithstanding) either for a relationship between Harry Potter and Hermione Granger or a relationship between Harry and Ginny Weasley. In Rowling's epilogue, Harry marries Ginny and his friend Ron marries Hermione. The couples produce children, and even the children of supporting characters have begun to pair off in the epilogue. By decisively determining who marries whom, Rowling moved to shut down the speculation, imagination, and fantasy that inform fannish behavior and identity. McNellis says, "Rowling also put in jabs at the [non-cannonical] shippers in the later books [but] it was really the epilogue that upset people. I mean, of course she's the author and she can do as she pleases, but there's something to be said for leaving a story in a place where the reader can make up the future as they wish." In other words, Rowling ultimately chose to assert the primacy of her authorship. I have described this incident in some detail because it is a powerful example of the slippery nature of authorship in an age of widespread media literacy.
<17> The Rowling epilogue is essentially a simple dialogue between the"author as canon-creator and her fans. "It was okay to speculate and write a little fan fiction before I was finished with Harry Potter," Rowling seems to have said, "but now it's time to remember who's really in charge." The conversation between producers and fans of Supernatural is much more ambiguous, much more interactive, and much more playful. Wincest, one of the most popular genres of Supernatural fan fiction, has been acknowledged several times in the series. In episode eight of season one (Bugs"), the brothers are repeatedly mistaken for a couple. In the premiere of season four (Lazarus Rising"), a woman with whom Sam is sleeping asks him if he and Dean "are, like, together." This incident in particular adds nothing to the story, and indeed seems forced and artificial: there is no reason for the woman to think that Sam and Dean are lovers. The incident in "Lazarus Rising" seems to be an apt example of fan service: a deliberate reach outside of the canon text designed to smilingly acknowledge fans' reading of the television series. [15] Levy Gabriel, a former member of CLSPN, told me that she and other fans feel that series creator Eric Kripke has affirmed the Sam/Dean pairing by refusing to introduce any long-standing love interests for either brother. While Gabriel does not believe that Kripke intends to legitimate the incestuous relationship between Sam and Dean, she notes that every female character who becomes sexually or romantically involved with one of the brothers is quickly killed or disposed of in a similarly permanent way (Gabriel, personal conversation, December 2009). CLSPN apparently noticed the same trend. Communities and private journals on livejournal have a title anda subtitle. CLSPN's subtitle was "99 PROBLEMS BUT A BITCH AIN'T ONE [16] (CLSPN, December 2009).
<18> In our conversations, Gabriel noted that fans' reactions to supporting female characters on Supernatural have been overwhelmingly negative. She feels that if Kripke were to introduce a long-standing female lead, Supernatural fans would lose interest in the series. Shortly before the sixth season of Supernatural premiered, members of CLSPN voted on how long Dean's live-in girlfriend would manage to stay alive (the consensus: not very long) and what kind of horrible, violent things would happen to her in the meantime (CLSPN, September 2010). Given this prevailing attitude, Kripke's apparent support of the Sam/Dean pairing is at least partly an economic decision. Nevertheless, the lack of respectable female characters on Supernatural has alienated some fans, including Gabriel, who says she stopped watching the series after the third season when its misogynistic treatment of women became too distasteful.
<19> The consistent persecution and abuse of female characters on Supernatural also suggests that Wincest is the determining signifier of the Sam/Dean relationship. Ruby, a recurring character throughout seasons three and four, is a seemingly sympathetic demon with whom Sam becomes sexually involved. Dean detests Ruby and tries to kill her several times, over Sam's protests. In the final episode of season four (Lucifer Rising), Ruby's demonic allegiance is revealed, and Sam holds her while Dean stabs her. In this episode, the brothers violently dispose of a sexually appealing woman who has come between them, subverting Sam's affection for his brother until he is willing to lie to and even physically attack Dean (i.e., in "When the Levee Breaks," episode twenty-one of season four). In season three, Ruby is played by Katie Cassidy; in the fourth season, she is played by Genevieve Cortese, who married Padalecki in February 2010, an event that inspired a member of CLSPN to remark, "WELL, THEY DUN WENT AND DID IT...TSK. I GIVE IT A YEAR. OKAY...SIX MONTHS" (CLSPN, February 2010). Ackles was reportedly a member of the wedding party. The real-life friendship between Ackles and Padalecki, as well as the real-life romance between Padalecki and Cortese, offers fertile ground for fans interested in RPS.
<20> The fourth and fifth seasons of Supernatural engage more directly and dynamically with the Supernatural fandom than any other canon text. In "The Monster at the End of This Book" (season four, episode eighteen), Sam and Dean meet a novelist who has written a series of popular horror novels called Supernatural. The names of the novels match the names of the television episodes, and the first book was published in 2005, the same year that Supernatural premiered. An angel named Castiel (Misha Collins) identifies the novelist, Carver Edlund (Rob Benedict), as "a prophet of the Lord." Edlund writes the Winchesters' future before they experience it. The dynamic between Sam, Dean, and Edlund mirrors the relationship between the canon producers of Supernatural and its fans. While Edlund is capable of controlling his characters to some degree, the viewer understands that the Winchesters also have some determinate power over their lives. One might say that Edlund's Sam and Dean have taken on lives of their own. In the same way, Supernatural fanworks borrow the canon producers' determinate power and write Sam and Dean into situations that never appeared on television. Edlund apologizes to the Winchesters for subjecting them to terrifying and implausible situations: "Horror is one thing," he says, "but to be forced to live bad writing..." If he had known that he was writing the Winchesters' lives, Edlund continues, he would have taken his work much more seriously. In this exchange, Edlund is figured as a fan rather than a canon producer: by writing the brothers' lives into his novels, he is benefiting professionally and financially `17 from Sam and Dean, from things they do and from things that happen to them. The Winchesters' determination to regain control over their lives suggests a preoccupation with authority and dominance that defines the fourth and fifth seasons. In their interactions with Edlund, the Winchesters sometimes seem like fans (Edlund may have written the books, but Sam and Dean will do what they want with the content) and sometimes like canon producers (Edlund may have written the books, but the content belongs to Sam and Dean, and they reserve ultimate authority over it). Castiel predicts that Edlund's novels will one day be known as "the Winchester Gospel," a term that implies absolute authority and integrity. Castiel also insists that "what the prophet [Edlund] has written can't be unwritten." When Dean asks how he and Sam can "get around," the events Edlund has predicted, Castiel says that this is impossible. When Dean asks Castiel for help defying Edlund's prophecies, the angel refuses, repeating that he cannot interfere with the will of God. Aligning Edlund with God and his books with the Gospels would seem to be an emphatic assertion of canon authority in the face of fan-generated content. But "The Monster at the End of This Book" ends with Sam and Dean successfully avoiding a disaster detailed in Edlund's books. They do so with the implicit assistance of Castiel, who is thereby figured as a member of the canon camp who willingly engages with fans' rewriting of that canon. The line between the canon text and fanworks is an ever-shifting boundary. Not only does Supernatural acknowledge the difficulties involved in navigating and defining this middle ground, it delights in occupying the space between criticizing and condoning its fandom.
<21> The fifth season introduces a conflict between the Winchesters and angels, including Lucifer. The angels need to use the brothers' bodies as vessels in order to wage war against Hell. In the mythology of Supernatural, a human must give consent before an angel can use his or her body. The Winchesters refuse to give this consent. The rivalry between the angels and the Winchesters is a struggle for control over narrative. Although at first there is an alliance between the angels and the Winchesters, it is an uneasy alliance, troubled by concerns of authority and priority. Who has control over an individual: his creator (God, usually represented by the angels), or the individual himself? Who has authority over a text: its original creator, or those whose participation shapes and subverts the text? Can God and his angels even be credited with creating the Winchesters? The Winchesters' refusal to surrender their individual agency is another ambiguous statement about authorship. Sam and Dean see themselves as unique individuals with control over their own lives; the angels see them as mere vessels to be inhabited and manipulated. As in their relationship with Edlund, the Winchesters are both fans and canon producers, both originators and interpreters of their own characters. The Winchesters' bodies therefore represent the battleground on which issues of authorship and narrative are challenged and reinvented. `18 In the last episode of season five, Edlund flickers and disappears after writing the book that matches the final episode. This suggestion that Edlund is God also implies that he designed and/or encouraged the dialogue between Sam, Dean, and the angels; that this apparent battlefield over authority and agency was actually predetermined. Perhaps this is how the canon producers of Supernatural see themselves: involved yet detached, manipulating events to their own satisfaction.
<22> The premier of season five (Sympathy for the Devil") introduces a character named Becky who writes Wincest fan fiction based on the Supernatural books. She is the webmistress for a fictional website called MoreThanBrothers.net, and her username is samlicker81. In The Real Ghostbusters (episode nine of season five), Becky tricks the Winchesters into attending a fan convention for the book series Supernatural. Sam and Dean arrive to see dozens of men and women dressed as characters from Supernatural, [19] including the brothers themselves as well as villains and supporting characters like Bobby Singer. [20] Many of the fans dressed as "Sam" or"Dean" are black, Asian, female, overweight, gender-queer, or otherwise entirely unlike the "real" Winchesters. This suggests an openness to the fandom, a sense that anyone can appropriate the Winchesters' identities for their own entertainment and enjoyment. Yet the episode ultimately limits fans' freedom to interpret the Winchesters however they want. Throughout the episode, Sam and Dean are extremely uncomfortable around fans dressed as the Winchesters, and there are confrontations between "the real ghostbusters" and those portraying them. The brothers' discomfort reflects the discomfort canon producers feel toward fans who appropriate their work in ways they, the canon producers, find distasteful.
<23> Sam and Dean first encounter fan fiction in The Monster at the End of This Book, when they discover Edlund's novels. And not just any fan fiction: Wincest. "What's a slash fan?" Dean asks, as the brothers scroll through fan sites online. Sam, obviously uncomfortable, replies, "As in Sam slash Dean...together." Dean balks "Like, together-together?... They do know we're brothers, right?" Sam says, "Doesn't seem to matter," and Dean is horrified: "Oh, come on. That...that's just sick." Although its tone is good-humored, this exchange pokes fun at Supernatural fans and their subversions of the canon text. Other scenes in the fifth season do the same. In Sympathy for the Devil," when Edlund tells Becky that Sam and Dean are real, she is initially insulted: "Look, Mr. Edlund, yes, I'm a fan, but I really don't appreciate being mocked. I know that Supernatural is just a book, okay? I know the difference between fiction and reality." When Edlund insists, "Becky, it's all real," she immediately crows "I knew it! [21] Becky's enthusiasm for Supernatural, her eagerness to believe that the books are real, suggests that fans are irrational, even delusional people with a tenuous grasp of reality. Throughout Sympathy for the Devil" and The Real Ghostbusters, [22] Becky the self-proclaimed number one fan [23] is portrayed as a hysterical, aggressively flirtatious woman who misinterprets Sam's politeness to her. Other fans at the convention are portrayed in similar ways. After Sam and Dean discover that the hotel is haunted, they ask the concierge about the building's history. Mistaking them for fans, the concierge snorts, Look, I don't have time to play Star Wars, guys. A woman pretending to be a ghost for the benefit of the live-action role players mistakes Dean for a fan and tells him that he seems different "from the other fans" because, she says, he isn't afraid of women. Later in the episode, Dean asks two male fans dressed as the Winchesters how they met. When they reply that they met in a Supernatural chat room, Dean says, Must be nice. Get out of your parents' basement and make some friends. Like the actress pretending to be a ghost, Dean equates Supernatural fans with awkward, socially isolated men who live with their parents because they are unable to form mature relationships with women.
<24> At the convention, fans engage in a live-action role-playing game in which they "hunt" ghosts. "Only by staying in character and pretending to defeat the actors playing ghosts can the LARPers "win." Predictably, the hotel where the convention is held turns out to be genuinely haunted, and Sam and Dean must cooperate with their fans to eradicate the spirits (thereby winning the game). Camille Bacon-Smith (1992) reads fan conventions that emphasize gameplay as homosocial spaces from which women tend to be excluded "even though most fans are women. The Supernatural convention in "The Real Ghostbusters," although it includes female fans, is dominated by men, and the gameplay elements of the convention are heavily emphasized. For Constance Penley, slash fiction is a reaction against homosocial spaces and relationships that exclude or even demonize women: "To make slash fiction do the 'cultural work' fans want it to do, the slashers have ingeniously rewritten and recast the American mythos of...male bonding by making that relationship homoerotic rather than homosocial" (Penley, 145, 1997). Yet it is the homosociality of Supernatural that is emphasized in "The Real Ghostbusters": at the end of the episode, two male fans dressed as Sam and Dean are revealed to be romantic partners. Their homosexual relationship is subsumed by their homosocial portrayal of the Winchester brothers, and the homoeroticism of the Supernatural books is deemphasized, even patronized, by its designation as a "subtext."
<25> The Real Ghostbusters presents fan participation in Supernatural as a game in which there are winners (those who stay in character) and losers (those who do not accurately portray Sam and Dean). "The Real Ghostbusters" criticizes Supernatural fans for their devotion to the series and delegitimizes the enormously popular Sam/Dean pairing. It is extremely significant that the "Sam" and "Dean" who turn out to be romantically involved give no indication of the real status of their relationship until the end of the episode, when the convention is over and everyone is leaving. While they are playing the brothers, the fans cannot express the real nature of their relationship because such an expression would be a dramatic and even disturbing departure from the canon. Fans in The Real Ghostbusters may discuss "the homoerotic subtext" of the books, but any genuinely homoerotic interactions are implicitly forbidden. Wincest may be an acceptable subject for fan fiction, but The Real Ghostbusters suggests that real-life Supernatural fans who advocate a romantic and/or sexual relationship between the Winchester brothers ought not to expect the canon producers to do more than chuckle at this pairing. Like Rowling, the canon producers of Supernatural reserve ultimate authorship for themselves. There are some things that Sam and Dean simply would not do namely, each other. While it may be entertaining to discuss the homoerotic subtext of the series, Wincest ought to remain a subtext, an interpretation of the series that will never be wholly legitimate.
<26> The concierge's reference to Star Wars in The Real Ghostbusters is a nod to another text whose author has also engaged actively with his fans. As Jenkins notes, with the official Star Wars fanvid competition, George Lucas "opened up a space for fans to create and share what they create with others but only on his terms" (Jenkins, 154, 2006; italics mine). Chris Albrecht of AtomFilms congratulates Lucas on his involvement with the Star Wars fandom: "Hats off to Lucas for recognizing that this is happening and giving the public a chance to participate in a universe they know and love. There's nothing else like this out there. No other producer has gone this far. (Albrecht qtd. in Jenkins, 153, 2006)" The producers of Supernatural, of course, have gone much further than Lucas, and although The Real Ghostbusters does impose implicit limits on Supernatural fans, Henry Jenkins shows that Lucas's apparent tolerance of fanworks does not extend even this far. Jim Ward, vice president of marketing for Lucasfilm, told a New York Times reporter in 2002, "We've been very clear all along on where we draw the line. We love our fans. We want them to have fun. But if in fact somebody is using our characters to create a story unto itself, that's not in the spirit of what we think fandom is about. Fandom is about celebrating the story the way it is (Ward qtd. in Jenkins, 153-154, 2006)" Some branches of fandom may be about "celebrating the story the way it is," but the most dramatic and provocative examples of participatory culture indicate that fandom has a much more complex definition. Ward's proprietary attitude toward fanworks mirrors that of his boss: In 2000, Lucasfilm offered Star Wars fans free Web space (www.starwars.com) and unique content for their sites, but only under the condition that whatever they created would become the studio's intellectual property" (Jenkins, 156-157, 2006). Jenkins suggests that "Lucasfilm seems more forward thinking and responsive to the fan community than most Hollywood companies" (Jenkins, 154, 2006), but Lucas's desire to appropriate fanworks as his own intellectual property is nevertheless distressing to many fans. According to Jenkins, Lucas allegedly became wary of fan fiction when he "stumbled onto some examples of fan erotica that shocked his sensibilities" (Jenkins, 155, 2006). Lucas appreciates fans who "celebrate the story the way it is," and the creators of Supernatural ultimately seem to feel the same way. What is most intriguing about the Supernatural fandom is that the shocking content of CLSPN actually indicates an unexpected adherence to the canonical structure of the series.
III
Conclusion:
The Wincest Taboo & Media Convergence
<27> Unlike fans who write consensual Wincest, members of CLSPN accepted the restrictive structure imposed by the Supernatural producers and operated within the canon structure. They acknowledged that Sam and Dean would never engage in consensual intercourse. Rape is what remains: the only possible sexual encounter between the Winchesters is a forcible violation. CLSPN did not seriously argue that one brother should rape the other onscreen; their rape fics, as I have shown, were meant to be humorous and hyperbolic. Nevertheless, the popularity of rape jokes in CLSPN indicates an acceptance of the canon producers' insistence that homoerotic readings of Supernatural, while interesting and amusing in their place, do not accurately reflect the characters of Sam and Dean. Non-capslock fans who write consensual Wincest are operating outside the structure of the show, but CLSPN's irreverent treatment of the rape taboo was actually an acknowledgment that consensual homosexual intercourse is not and will never be canon. Thus the suppression of the homosexual relationship between the cosplayers in The Real Ghostbusters.
<28> RPS on CLSPN also affirmed the canonical structure of the series: Sam and Dean may not have a homosexual relationship, but perhaps Ackles and Padalecki do. As with rape fics, writers of RPS are not trying to make a real case for a sexual relationship between Ackles and Padalecki (although, then again, maybe they are "a number of gossip bloggers have reported that Padalecki is gay). RPS is another way of getting outside the structure of the series: fans write Ackles/Padalecki because the canon producers of Supernatural have made it clear that Sam/Dean is not a legitimate pairing. In one manip posted to CLSPN, Padalecki is portrayed as a male-to-female transsexual. A homosexual relationship between Sam and Dean may be taboo, but if Padalecki's sex is changed to female, the relationship suddenly fits into the canonical structure of the series. While the tone of the community was obviously humorous, members of CLSPN actually took their fandom much more seriously than the mainstream fan.
<29> I have focused on three significant branches of the Supernatural community: the canon producers, mainstream or non-capslock fans, and members of CLSPN. Wincest is the mobile signifier which defines these branches and their relationships to each other, just as the incest taboo defines relationships between family members. The universal, or nearly universal, incest taboo separates family members from each other even as it connects them: the taboo draws lines that cannot be crossed, but the very existence and prevalence of this taboo serves to unite family members, to define their familial relationships clearly and absolutely. So "the Wincest taboo" operates in the Supernatural fandom.
<30> If CLSPN took anything seriously "other than the series itself" it was its own rules and regulations, the codified practices that defined it as a community. CLSPN was not simply a community of like-minded viewers; it was, to return to Booth, part of a larger media "game," a competitive and affective activity that influenced and controlled the expression of "the Wincest taboo" within the Supernatural fandom. As a paratext, CLSPN tells us a great deal about fan behavior and identity in the Supernatural fandom, but it also reveals a heretofore undiscovered conversation between the producers of the television series and its users (to borrow a term from Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life [1984]). The implications of this conversation go far beyond the Supernatural fandom or even fan studies more generally. Looking at fanworks and fan communities in tandem with their source texts is a valuable project. As Gray says, "Each proliferation [of a text] holds the potential to change the meaning of the text, if only slightly." I hope this project will help nudge open the door to further interdisciplinary approaches mapping practices, trends, and desires across different texts and disciplines such as media studies, fan studies, and literary studies.
Notes
1. By fanwork, I mean fan fiction, fanvids, macros (pictures with text superimposed), manips (digitally altered pictures), or any other text created by a fan or fans.
2. Following fan vernacular, I use "canon" to mean the original or source text on which a fandom is based (i.e., the television series Supernatural created by Eric Kripke). Canon is both a noun and an adjective: i.e., if a relationship between two characters is "canon, " that relationship was portrayed in the canon source. In the Harry Potter fandom, then, a romantic relationship between Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley is canon, while a relationship between Harry Potter and Hermione Granger is not.
3. Foundational works in areas of fan studies relevant to my project include those by Janice Radway (Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, 1984), Henry Jenkins (Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, 1992; Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, 2006; Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, 2006), Camille Bacon-Smith (Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth, 1992), Constance Penley (Nasa/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America, 1997), and Matt Hills (Fan Cultures, 2002). More recently, there has been a surge of interest in reevaluating what constitutes a fan, particularly through examinations of anti-fan and non-fan identity. I have in mind Jonathan Gray (New Audiences, New Textualities, 2003), Diane F. Alters (The Other Side of Fandom: Anti-Fans, Non-Fans, and the Hurts of History, 2007), and Flourish Klink (Laugh Out Loud in Real Life: Women's Humor and Fan Identity, 2010). Nancy K. Baym (Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Communities, 2000), Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, 2006), and Sharon Russ (Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet, 2008) have focused on the relationship between television and online fan communities, while Mary Kirby-Diaz (Buffy and Angel Conquer the Internet: Essays on Online Fandom, 2009) and Milly Williamson (The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction, and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy, 2005) have made extremely pertinent genre-specific inquiries into television fandom.
4. For the sake of visual clarity, I have chosen to italicize livejournal as well as CLSPN and other livejournal communities I mention here. This is not usually done on the websites themselves: livejournal communities and livejournal itself are not distinguished typographically from other text.
5. In the case of CLSPN, users who posted in lowercase were ordered to post a form of penance. CLSPN made its purpose and policies clear in its 10 COMMANDMENTS OF CAPSLOCK, the first of which I cite here:
THOU SHALT NOT USE LOWERCASE. TURN YOUR CAPSLOCK KEY ON AND DON'T HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY WTF. LOWERCASE INCLUDE LOWERCASE LETTERS THAT ARE PART OF EMOTICONS OR SHIT LIKE THAT.THE ONLY TIME LOWERCASE IS OKAY IS IF YOU'RE QUOTING SOMETHING OR PASTING A URL. IF YOU DO THIS ACCIDENTALLY THE FIRST PERSON TO CATCH YOU MAY REQUEST ABSOLUTELY ANY SORT OF PENANCE AKA "PEENDANCE" (GENERALLY A MANIP OR PICSPAM OR SHORT FIC). YOU MUST THEN POST THAT PENANCE ASAP BUT DEFINITELY W/IN A WEEK IF YOU WANT TO AVOID BEING BANNED. IF YOU FORGET, THE MODS [community moderators] WILL ISSUE A REMINDERGIVING YOU ANOTHER THREE DAYS. IF IT ISN'T POSTED WITHIN THAT TIME, YOU WILL BE BANNED FROM THE COMMUNITY, NO EXCEPTIONS. IT ISN'T THAT HARD TO TAKE SIX MINUTES OUT OF YOUR LIFE TO WRITE 200 WORDS OF FICTION OR CUT AND PASTE SOMEONE'S FACE IN PAINT. (CLSPN, November 2009)
The Biblical format of the rules on CLSPN indicates the simultaneously playful and serious nature of the community: if members had stopped posting in all caps, for instance, CLSPN would no longer have been a visibly distinct community. Fittingly, this was the first commandment. The Biblical allusion is also a nod to Supernatural's Judeo-Christian worldview, in which Satan fights against God and the angels with ghosts and demons as his ally.
6. Another commandment of CLSPN was not to attack other community members personally, although "PLAYFULLY POKING FUN AND JOKING AROUND WITH EACH OTHER IS AWESOME" and "PEOPLE IN OTHER COMMUNITIES ARE FAIR GAME" for more personal and aggressive attacks (CLSPN, November 2009).
7. community.livejournal.com/capslock_friday. Capslock_friday was established in July 2005.
8. CLSPN was deleted by its moderators in September 2010, within days of Supernatural's sixth season premiere. As far as I am aware, the community was permanently deleted, and the small number of images I saved in addition to my transcriptions here constitute the entire archive. According to Levy Gabriel, a former member of CLSPN whom I cite extensively in this paper, the moderators of the community deleted it because "they thought it was dying, and they wanted to put it out of its misery" (Gabriel, personal conversation, September 2010). Indeed, members posted much less frequently in 2010 than they did in previous years. However, the fact that CLSPN was deleted within mere days of the sixth season premiere of Supernatural "a season that begins with Dean living with his girlfriend and acting as a father to her son" is highly suspect. Perhaps the moderators of CLSPN deleted the community because they felt the series would no longer provide sufficient opportunities for mockery and entertainment, or perhaps they felt discomfited by Dean's apparently lasting relationship with a woman. In any case, the deletion of CLSPN reaffirms the importance of active, innovative fan participation in such a text.
9. Another intriguing capslock community is capslock_house, the community dedicated to the television series House (2004). There was an overlap in membership between capslock_house and CLSPN that led to similarities between the two, most notably the prevalence of rape jokes in both communities (fanlore.org, November 2009). Although I will not discuss this overlap in detail, its existence is worth noting and examining more closely in future projects.
10. CLSPN was a members-only community: prospective members were required to be approved by a community moderator or moderators prior to being granted access to the community. Hills (2002) suggests that online fan communities "could be considered as a form of public space since by definition they are open to anonymous, unseen lurkers who need not post nor actively contribute" to the community (Hills, 172). While nonmembers-only communities like capslock_friday and capslock_house might be considered public spaces, CLSPN should be considered a private, even restrictive, space, at least in terms of access and participation.
11. Rape is a popular metaphor in fan culture, by no means confined to CLSPN and capslock_house. The term canon rape refers to a fanwork that totally disregards or subverts the logical structure of the canon. Ironically, rape-themed fanworks in CLSPN ought not to be considered canon rape. Rather, consensual Wincest is canon rape because it chooses to ignore the logic of the series. Rape is usually spelled "'raep' " in CLSPN. "'Raep'" is a deliberate misspelling o "rap" that is meant to be funny. The term, which may have originated in online gaming communities, is not unique to any capslock community, although it is (unsurprisingly) a popular word on CLSPN and capslock_house.
12. In My Life is a WIP on my LJ: Slashing the Slasher and the Reality of Celebrity and Internet Performances (2006), Kristina Busse examines fan interaction and identity on livejournal as a form of performative real person slash.
13. I would take issue with Hills assertion that fan play is non-competitive; some forms of playfulness are non-competitive and non-confrontational, of course, but the game-like dynamic between Supernatural and its fandom seems to me to be a competitive, if good-natured, rivalry. Similarly, the strict rules and codified practices of CLSPN suggest that an element of competition shapes and regulates many interactions and relationships between fans.
14. A fan's favorite pairing or ship is called his or her "OTP," for "one true pairing. An OT3 is a somewhat facetious term for fan fiction that involves a romantic and/or sexual relationship between three characters. "JENSEN/HORSE=OTP" was a tag in CLSPN that makes fun of Ackles as well as fans who are extremely emotionally invested in their pairings.
15. House has engaged in similar fan service, and Constance Penley points out that Star Trek, the series that inspired the term "slash" (from Kirk/Spock), also contains examples of fan service (Penley, 100, 1997). Henry Jenkins argues that storytellers now think about storytelling in terms of creating openings for consumer participation " and refers to the interplay and tension between the top-down force of corporate convergence and the bottom-up force of grassroots convergence that is driving many of the changes we are observing in the media landscape" (Jenkins, 175, 2006). Nowhere is this interplay and tension more apparent than in seasons four and five of Supernatural.
16. The subtitle is a reference to Jay-Z's 2004 single "99 Problems" which begins with the line "If you're having girl problems, I feel bad for you, son / I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one." Episode seventeen of season five is titled "99 Problems," an implicit acknowledgment of the lack of consistent female characters on Supernatural. I believe that the episode title "99 Problems" is not a direct reference to CLSPN, but is rather a coincidental reference to a song that resonates with the thematics of the series. Both the canon producers of Supernatural and the capslockers are toying with and transforming their common culture, in this instance by blending references to the Book of Revelations (the plot of 99 Problems centers on the brothers' murder of the Whore of Babylon) with a popular hip-hop song.
17. Most fans do not benefit financially from their work, and any professional and/or financial benefits are beside the point for most devoted fans. Yet by using canon plots, premises, and characters for their own purposes "even if those purposes are only entertainment and enjoyment" fans still benefit from the canon.
18. The centrality of consent in the fifth season, particularly the angels' efforts to obtain the brothers' consent by wheedling, intimidating, and outright threatening, recalls the centrality of rape in CLSPN, in which the brothers' bodies are also a battleground between fannish desires and the contradictory desires represented by the canon.
19. Dressing as a fictional character at a fan convention is called "cosplay," from costume play. One member of CLSPN reacted to "The Real Ghostbusters" by posting a manipulated macro of Ackles and Padalecki dressed as characters from an unspecified Japanese anime or manga fandom. Block letters across the picture read, THE REAL COSPLAYERS (CLSPN, November 2009).
20. Bobby Singer, the Winchesters' mentor and surrogate father, is named after Supernatural writer and director Robert Singer.
21. This is precisely the same situation even the same line as in Galaxy Quest (1999), a film about a science-fiction television series with an active fandom. In Galaxy Quest, a real alien race unexpectedly requires the assistance of both actors and fans.
22. There are layers of allusion at work here. The Real Ghostbusters is also the name of a Ghostbusters cartoon spin-off from the 1980s. The title of the cartoon series seems to have been a proprietary reaction to the franchise owners' perception that other artists were benefiting unfairly from the successful film. Sympathy for the Devil, like many Supernatural episode titles, is the title of a classic rock song (The Rolling Stones, 1968). Even in their episode titles, the creators of Supernatural insist on borrowing, subverting, and reinventing other cultural texts in the creation of new ones. The centrality of fan reuses of copyrighted material in these episodes is reflected in the series creators' own practices.
23. This is another allusion, this time to Stephen King's Misery (1987), in which retired nurse Annie Wilkes imprisons her favorite author, romance novelist Paul Sheldon, in her isolated home. Sheldon is the author of a series of Victorian romances about Misery Chastain. In the most recent novel, Sheldon killed off his heroine in order to free himself to write more cerebral fare. Wilkes tortures Sheldon until he renounces his most recent novel and writes a new one in which Misery survives, thus fulfilling Wilkes's ideal version of the series. Throughout Misery, Wilkes and Sheldon struggle violently for authority over Sheldon's fictional world. Wilkes destroys Sheldon's only copy of his unpublished novel, which he wrote after finishing the Misery series. Wilkes mutilates Sheldon by cutting off his foot and thumb, and he eventually kills her by throwing his typewriter at her head and stuffing handwritten manuscript pages down her throat. (Anachronistically, Edlund writes the Supernatural novels on a typewriter.) Wilkes repeatedly refers to herself as Sheldon's "number one fan." Obviously, this allusion betrays a rather sinister vision of fans and fandom.
Works Cited
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Booth, Paul. Digital Fandom: New Media Studies. New York: Peter Lang, 2010.
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de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
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Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. Posthumanism. Ed. Neil Badmington. New York: Halgrave, 2000. 69-84.
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McNellis, Jamie. Personal correspondence. 10 October 2011.
Penley, Constance. NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America. New York: Verso, 1997.
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