What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

waywardbard:
“Hello, friends.
If you walk into a crowd at any Supernatural convention, chances are a good portion of said crowd will be female-presenting. The irony here is that the first “fan convention” presented on the show itself hosted an...

waywardbard:

Hello, friends.

If you walk into a crowd at any Supernatural convention, chances are a good portion of said crowd will be female-presenting.  The irony here is that the first “fan convention” presented on the show itself hosted an entirely male-presenting crowd.  Of course, once the writers and producers became more aware of their audience, the perception changed.  What hasn’t changed is the way female characters are treated on the show, and it’s something that female fans repeatedly bring up in meta, in conversations with each other, in hashtags and tumblr posts, facebook groups and livejournal entries.  Some fans have stopped watching the show entirely after certain female characters were “fridged” –  a term coined by Gail Simone to refer to women who have been injured, killed, or depowered as a plot device within various media avenues usually propping up a male character’s desires for revenge/justice/whatever. It’s a term any good feminist is familiar with.  We’re all angry about it.

I remember a moment where I wrote in a blog post about wishing that there was a female equivalent of Supernatural, where the women were not defined by men or their relationships with men.  Someone snarkily replied with “Buffy,” which infuriated me to no end.  I’m not saying Buffy didn’t have its impact.  It had issues too, like issues with racism and how the women were frequently punished for their relationships with men. It’s like saying “a woman did this thing once so we don’t need women to do other new things in this field” and – forgive me – but that’s actually the biggest crock of bullshit ever.  Nevermind the fact that there hasn’t been another show similar to it since the late 90’s.  But I’m not here to go into a huge tangent about Buffy.  I didn’t watch Buffy, I have no real interest in watching Buffy.  I wanted female hunters that had taken up their jobs because they wanted to and had been interested in it.  I wanted male side characters that would be equal to them instead of bumbling idiots that made the female leads look competent through their own failings. I wanted character development instead of repeated cycling, without unnecessary drama and suffering.

I still watch Supernatural, but I pine for these things.  I think we all do.  And if the Winchesters were suddenly women, you can bet there’d suddenly be more clinginess and daddy issues since that’s already the default that male-dominated Hollywood gives to female characters. But there are other parts of fandom, at least in its earlier years if memory serves, that got extremely aggressive any time a female character was introduced.  They didn’t want this-or-that female character hooking up with the boys.  How dare that harlot sully their perfect boys!  Taking their eyes off the Family Business!  The production took that small but loud minority and reacted to it by killing these women and therefore betraying us all but has somehow ignored the outcry for more and better female representation.  There’s other arguments to be added to the pile, but the long and short of it is that the women characters were never treated the way they were deserved in my humble opinion.  Either they were purposefully archetypal to fulfill the base needs the boys spent their whole life needing and ultimately died, or they were villains who died; if they were younger women, they were little sisters or needed to be protected; if they were older women, they were always mothers; if they were beautiful, they were sexual conquests.

It was frustrating.  It’s still frustrating.  Rarely were we given a female character with a recurring role who survived.  I still want that, but I’m not sure it’s a desire that will ever be fulfilled outside of fan fiction or long-winded debates among small groups of friends.

That’s basically the spark behind “Ladies of SPN Con.”  I wanted the opportunity to talk to all these amazing female actresses: to ask them about their characters, why they chose to play them, how they approached the roles, how they felt about the way the characters ended up, what they hoped to accomplish.  Going even further, I found myself wanting to ask questions about the crew involved in the show as well: what brought them into Supernatural, what kept them there, what they loved about their roles in making the show come alive on screen, what they hoped would improve.  I found myself digging deep, realizing how few female writers we had and how they all seemed to trickle off as the show continued on; learning how there’d only been 2-3 female directors; how there were no VFX women.  Again, this infuriated me.  Why was this the case?  I wanted to open a dialogue, not only with the cast and crew of the show I’ve spent the last 10 years fully engrossed in, but with the fan community as a whole.  I wanted to give people the opportunity they so obviously craved.  Even the actresses craved it – I could see it in twitter exchanges with Kim Rhodes and Julia McNiven and the fans, the outrage that immediately came from the death of Celeste Middleton and the hashtag campaign that exploded out of it.  

The match behind the spark came from my own friends, Taye and Jaycen.  We’d been talking big on the euphoria from a Skype call with the Kings of Con about why there wasn’t a Ladies convention.  How we could get it going, how we could kickstart it, how to not let it fail like some of the other epic disasters of fan-run cons.  I got online and I started tweeting.  I garnered interest.  It’s been just under a week, and already @LadiesofSPN just passed 350 followers and is still climbing.  I’ve spoken with at least a dozen past and recent actresses, all of whom are eager and anticipating me giving them set-in-stone information.  Academic types and crew are also on standby.  Everything is so new, all the lingo and the budgeting, searching for venues and setting up an action plan.  It’s trial by fire (forgive me for beating you over the head with the metaphor; but considering how Mary Winchester died…) but the people assembling at my side to make this happen are just as driven. This is going to happen if it’s the last thing I do, even if this is the only run the convention has.

And it’s going to be badass.  But I need your help.

I need you to tweet about it using #SPNLadiesCon and using @’s at your favorite ladies.  I need you to follow our twitter. I need you to join our Crowdfund Countdown and get involved, even if it’s $1.

Let’s make this happen.

(Source: solongandsuch, via compassionatedragon)

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    32 days remain! We have Meet and Greets with Cindy Sampson and Nicki Aycox, Skype calls with Nina Winkler and Viv...
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    Fuck yeah. Reblog. Retweet. Share!! Tell the world!!
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