Presenters
Abstract
Known for its ardent fan following, CW’s Supernatural has twice incorporated female fans as characters within its canonical text: Becky Rosen, self-professed superfan of the Supernatural book series who writes Wincest fan fiction, and Charlie Bradbury, a nerd-cool computer hacker with a penchant for live-action roleplay. Although Becky’s three appearances—especially her most recent in season 7—generated unease amongst much of the show’s primarily female fanbase, Charlie’s four (and counting) appearances have been hailed by many fans as presenting a laudatory example of geekdom and a model of much-needed queer representation within the Supernatural text.
At first glance, the difference in fans’ reception of the two characters is understandable. Becky is often read as the apotheosis of the excessive, obsessive fangirl, driven to delusion by her lust for Sam Winchester. Charlie, by contrast, is a queer woman with interests far more diverse than Becky’s, whose fannish poise and command of pop-culture knowledge not only lead her to be crowned queen in the LARP of her choice but also prove life-saving to the Winchesters. However, the apparent fluidity of Charlie’s character belies the ways in which Charlie and her “queer” positionality within the text function as agents of constraint for female fans.
Thus, building on Suzanne Scott’s concept of the “quality fan,” this paper will argue that Supernatural constructs Charlie as a template for female fan engagement, one that erases fans’ heterosexual desire and exercise of textual authority—the characteristics that define Becky Rosen and have dominated Supernatural fans’ practice for nine seasons. Further, we will contend that the reconstruction of the female fan within Supernatural’s narrative and the subsequent reproduction of that model by the show’s fans themselves has wider, troubling implications akin to what Mel Stanfill refers to as the increasingly industrial orientation and “containment” of fandom.