Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World

The Epic Love Story of Supernatural and Fanfic - Jules Wilkinson (missyjack)

Supernatural fandom has been hugely productive and creative in its writing and other fanworks over the more than eight years of the show, from niche communities featuring stories around a single minor character such as angel Anna Milton,vi or stories where one of the Winchester men is pregnant, vii through to multi-genre communities and challenges. You would be hard pressed to find a topic or genre or sexual kink not covered by our writing, and when we run out of established tropes we invent our own. Supernatural fandom is credited, for example, with popularizing "knotting" fanfics, in which people take on the social and sexual characteristics of dogs.viii 

Nothing sums up the collaborative and communal nature of fanfiction better than the SPN J2 Big Bang challenge.ix This challenge has become a much-anticipated annual fandom event, pairing artists with writers and involving many other fans as sounding boards, betas, and of course readers. From 2007 to 2012, it has seen over 1,000 stories, each averaging 40,000 words in length, with accompanying artwork produced. That's over 40 million words written in one challenge in one fandom. There are now fifteen other Supernatural-centric Big Bang challenges in existence, each focusing on specific characters or genres.x  

Two events that had a huge impact on fandom and fanfic occurred during Supernatural's fourth season. As the season started in September 2008, we saw the arrival of the character Castiel the angel, who was embraced by fandom. Fans adored his "profound bond" with Dean, and the pairing (known in true mashup form as "Destiel") become hugely popular; it now outranks Wincest as the most popular slash pairing.  

The other significant event in season four was that slash fanfic became canon.  

Back in 2005, the prohibition against sharing fanworks with those involved in the show was much stronger than it is today--especially when said works involved incestuous gay porn. Despite this, and despite fandom's first rule, fanfic has never been a secret from the people involved in making Supernatural. In May 2007 in England, at the first convention where Jensen Ackles appeared, he was asked whether he knew about fan fiction. He had:

One of my favorites is, uh, Wincest . . . I only hope that my grandmother never reads those. Jared [Padalecki, who plays Sam] and I had a good laugh about that one. It was only brought to our attention because [Supernatural producer] Kim Manners posted it.

Fans have raised the topic of fanfiction at nearly every Supernatural convention. When asked about what he thought of Wincest at the EyeCon convention in Florida in April 2008, Jared Padalecki managed to validate transformative works while avoiding the tricky incest issue:

With fanfiction and RPGs, . . . everyone's taking a part in Supernatural and they're not just watching it . . . and they're really passionate about the show, and especially the fans of Supernatural. It's a great learning tool, and exploring tool, to explore this world. So I'm supportive.

Jim Beaver (who plays Bobby Singer) was the first actor to tease fans with his knowledge of fan culture when he wore a T-shirt proclaiming "I read John/Bobby" (referring to slash fanfic featuring his character and Sam and Dean's father) to the 2008 EyeCon. He even once sent a complimentary email to the author of a fanfic piece that created a backstory for Bobby (note: it didn't contain any Bobby/John slash).  

Misha Collins in particular has shown a great curiosity and willingness to talk about fanfic, which still discomforts some fans, as Misha noted in an interview in 2009: 

You can sense the whole audience tensing up, like they don't want you to talk about this slash fiction weird pervy stuff that they get into. So I do like to bring it up for that reason.xi

Even the media asks Misha about fanfic. In a 2012 interview by Huffington Post TV critic Maureen Ryan, she commented that his character Castiel and Dean Winchester were "a continual source of speculation, fan fiction, pornography . . ." In response Misha said: "Yep. I'm just always gratified that I'm in some small way contributing to any kind of pornography. It warms the cockles of my heart. Words chosen carefully."xii