What reading 1,000 fan fictions in a year taught me (Part 1) by Nora Poggi
November 5, 2020. An infamous day for fans of Supernatural, the 15-year long CW show about 2 hunters fighting supernatural forces, Sam and Dean Winchester, and their angel companion Castiel. On that day, Castiel, played by Misha Collins, declared his romantic love for Dean Winchester, played by Jensen Ackles, the hunter who thought he didn’t deserve to be saved. The fan-favorite pairing (“ship“) Destiel – or Deancas, for Dean and Castiel, call it what you want – seemed to finally go canon, meaning acknowledged in the show, and not just up to the fans’ interpretation. Enter, Supernatural Destiel fanfiction.
That’s the day many of us in the Supernatural fandom emerged again from the ashes of a love story we had long given up on. Like countless others, I had grown tired of the queerbating and had started obsessing over other queer pairings on other shows who were actually given screen time, such as Malex on the CW’s Roswell New Mexico – barely able to admit to myself that I actually cared about how Dean & Castiel’s story might end after 12 years. But the episode that aired on November 5, 2020, jolted Destiel fans awake. When Castiel confessed his love to Dean, “Destiel” trended above the US election on Twitter. Except Castiel was taken away by The Empty, and we had two episodes left to – hopefully – get our happy ending. Needlesday to say, that didn’t happen. You can listen to the great podcast Fangirl Biz to make sense of that ending and how it traumatized the Supernatural fandom (all ships aside). Let’s just say Game of Thrones left a mild taste in comparison.
So, what is a fan to do? Especially in the middle of a pandemic, stuck at home while winter is coming, single, and NOT ready to mingle?
Falling down the fanfiction rabbit hole is the easiest thing in the world
My fanfiction days were somewhat behind me in 2020 (what a foolish thing to even write) but I was looking for something, anything – to wash the sour taste in my mouth and give me some semblance of hope and resolution for these two characters. When you’ve been investing in a TV show for years, your identity can become somewhat entangled in it (there’s a lot of great research out there on fandom and the construction of identity around the world, in music, sports, you name it) especially when there’s not a lot of good to go around in the middle of a pandemic. So like many other fans, I went right back to fanfiction, which consistently gave me the comfort that the show wouldn’t.
Thanks to the internet fairies, the fanfiction authors who kept me afloat the winter of 2020 and all throughout 2021. One can’t talk about fanfiction without also mentioning the huge efforts by fans to archive, collect, and share so much great work, sometimes deleted or impossible to find (which is especially important when your OTP is 12 years in the making, as Castiel first appeared on the show in 2009). I myself became obsessed with finding and archiving Supernatural Destiel fanfiction. Some days, I would read from 9 pm to 2 am – some weekends I would cancel all appointments just to stay in my room and read all day and night, in a trance. The types of fics one can read range from the very short – “one-shots” around 5-10K words or below, and novel-length, over 500K-words long. The Dean/Cas pairing is now the most popular pairing on fanfiction website Archives of Our Own, with over 100,000 works published by fans, some of whom have incredible talent, their writing surpassing that of “professional” writers (yes, really).
Stay tuned for Part 2, which will be released on Wed, March 9, 2022.
Read more of Nora’s work at Nora’s Lens.
Producer, Director, Impact Producer / distribution consultant
Nora Poggi is a French journalist/filmmaker. She directed and produced SHE STARTED IT, an award-winning feature documentary about women tech entrepreneurs. She has interviewed key players in Silicon Valley for four years for publications including Examiner.com & Usine Nouvelle and previously worked at French social network Viadeo.com and award-winning production company Lucky Dragon Productions.
She is a TEDx speaker and has been featured in Inc, Forbes, Fast Company, Glamour, Huffington Post and others. She works as an Impact Producer and consultant on various film distribution campaigns.
Nora also has her own website - Nora’s Lens - where she writes on a variety of topics, including film, politics, and life.