Chat: how did you get here and what have you found?

[de_nugis]

Greetings! I am de_nugis, and I'll be doing the monthly chat posts here at spnroundtable. Over the summer I hope to get into some canon meta and some talk about the various forms of fanwork, but for my first Chat I thought I'd return to the theme of the comm's very first chat post, which asked comm members and visitors to share their Supernatural fandom origin stories

Comments

[faege]

I guess I have Netflix to thank for Supernatural. I stumbled across Show in the "Suggested TV/Movies" section in 2008. I was a college freshman and a horror movie wuss, and there were good reviews saying that the horror wasn't too horrific and the boys were pretty and the show was funny, so I succumbed. I started with the Pilot and conned my roommate into watching with me since I was too chicken to watch alone. That led to us running to the mail room every day to see if a red Netflix envelope had come in, bearing our precious DVDs. It was like Harry Potter. Just not

[borgmama1of5]

My 20 yr old daughter was watching the dvds on loan from a friend in her room and my husband borrowed them to watch on the living room tv, and we live in a very small apartment, so I was exposed to the addictiveness that is Supernatural accidentally, and powered through the first 4 season in 3 weeks, just in time to start season 5 live :)

Discovered fanfic simultaneously, wish I could remember how...

And my personal world has gotten so much bigger from the connections I've made through fandom!

[de_nugis]

It's funny how many of us have fond memories of an initial marathon where we absorbed a season or four at top speed. When I feel a little sad at having missed so many years of this fandom, I comfort myself with the thought that being able to see the first seasons as a whole in massive mainlined doses was quite an experience in its own right.

And, yes, fandom is like the Tardis. It looks like such a narrow obsession to have, but its a lot bigger and more connected on the inside than it looks on the outside.

[borgmama1of5]

Tardis=fandom--brilliant insight :)

[quickreaver]

Ha! Spot-on comparison!

[faege]

Season 5 is the first season that I actually remember watching live and then jumping onto LJ or tumblr to commiserate with the rest of fandom about. Which probably makes it my favorite season, although the first three of a special place in my heart.

[de_nugis]

Ha, I'm delighted to hear that Netflix worked for someone! Their suggestions aren't quite as off for me as the Amazon ones tend to be (I get very tired of Amazon constantly trying to sell me everything vampire just because I once ordered Buffy), but I've never managed to discover anything through them.

We can drool and think at the same time! We are multitasky like that!

So many people have mentioned being a little daunted as well as inspired by this fandom. It seriously gives me hope for humanity in my darker moments, that so many people work together as part of a community producing absolutely top notch fic and art and vids and so on, when it won't ever earn them a penny or get them a grade or go into their tenure file. Fandom is an extraordinary mix of obsessively invested and disinterested.

[faege]

I don't even know what the heck I was watching that Netflix suggested SPN as a show I would like (maybe I rented a horror movie for a friend?) but I'm certainly glad it did.

Exactly. Powerful things happen when people do something because they love it. The other thing that amazes me is the organizing force behind so much of that fic/art/vid work, things like Big Bang and summergen and Secret Santa stuff. The idea of people pulling those comms together and getting so many people involved over so many years? Incredible. The amount of drive and skill it takes to get something like that off the ground and make it successful is another behind-the-scenes testament to how AWESOME our fandom is.