Family Don't End with Blood

How much has my experience on Supernatural and with the Supernatural fandom changed me?

leadership was like. I learned that having fun was not just for children and was an essential part of life. I learned that it was okay to be silly. My involvement with this show helped me save my sanity and find my happiness.
I have been working in IT for most of my professional life. I found my way into IT because I was a geek. I grew up with computers in our home, in the years before home computers were commonplace. I was a girl during a time when girls weren’t supposed to like technology or science fiction, but I loved both. I also loved to draw and to take photographs. While most of that fit in with my parents and two brothers, I was the only girl in that family and all of the girls I knew were more interested in playing

work and on play and on friendships. I struggle to explain to my family and non-Supernatural friends just what this show means to me. My current coworkers kind of get it. Some of them watch the show and really enjoy it. None of them is into it to the extent I am, but they get it. And that is another gift this show gave me: a workplace and coworkers who celebrate and encourage idiosyncrasies and passion.
My story is not extraordinary. I know many others have had more intense experiences. However, it was through this show that I discovered my community and I rediscovered my passions. I found a way to turn a miserable work life into a supporting and life-affirming environment. I learned what true

One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl: “A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men.” Prior to discovering this little show called Supernatural, the Joker’s question, “Why so serious?” would have been a more apt description of me.
I credit the people behind and in Supernatural with inspiring me to reinvent my whole perspective

. I was so nervous I felt like I was just going to pass out right on the stage. Even though I knew the lines—and they were on a teleprompter! It didn’t matter. I felt like I was about to faint just trying to do that.
Fast-forward to ten years later. Supernatural, and my experience with fans and doing conventions, has changed that for me. And it’s because of the interaction between us. I think Jared—and everyone else—would say the same thing. It’s because of the flow of love between us. We get so much energy from you. It’s fuel. That back and forth of emotion between us is fuel for me. And that emotion is genuine; it’s real. That makes all the difference.
Recently Jared and I presented at the Saturn Awards, and it was a

doing a “meet and greet”—something I do all the time at conventions, where a small group of twenty or so fans ask me questions—would have freaked me out. Before this experience, even at family events, I was anxious. I remember at my brother’s wedding, when I had to give a toast, I was so nervous it was like I had cottonmouth. I couldn’t even speak! I remember thinking, What’s wrong with me? I was already a professional actor by that time, so I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just get up and give a toast. It was like Bizarro Jensen!
The thing is, on television you have a script. You don’t have to be your real self when you’re acting. Unlike at that wedding. So that was bad enough. And then came the first awards ceremony that I had to

How much has my experience on Supernatural and with the Supernatural fandom changed me? A lot.
I’ll give you just one example. Before Supernatural, the idea of

and started flying across the country to go to fan conventions.
“You’re going where?” was a constant refrain. But meeting other fans, both in person and in the (at the time cloistered and secret) world of online fandom, turned out to be as life-changing as discovering Supernatural in the first place. The show and the fandom were a gateway to a sort of self-discovery that I thought I had put aside decades earlier.
Like many works of fantasy, the world of Supernatural is a place fans can escape to. Escape itself has benefits, as long as you manage to poke your head out from the fantasy long enough to hold down your job or take care of your family or hang out with your best friend.

I fell in love the way you do when you’re thirteen and falling for the first time: head over heels, all at once, so fast I was dizzy with it. When I came up for air, I was mystified. What was happening to me? At first, I felt silly. Was it really okay for me—a grown woman, a mom, a professor—to put aside my briefcase and research papers and oh-so-serious responsibilities to binge-watch an entire season of a science fiction TV show? To scour the web for pictures of its stars? To read lots and lots of fan fiction, and then to spend less time writing textbooks and more time writing fan fiction myself?
I wasn’t the only one asking those questions. My partner was asking, my children were asking, my colleagues were asking. Especially

are the things that make us happy.
For most of my career, I never thought of a television show, or a film or a book or a band, as something capable of offering all those things. That was before I fell in love with a television show and learned about the incredible community known as fandom.
Falling in love with a TV show was unexpected. It wasn’t even one of those programs that “everyone is watching” (which could be anything from Game of Thrones to The Bachelor, depending on your experience of “everyone”). No, this was a sci-fi fantasy genre show on a second-tier network that didn’t know quite what to do with it—Supernatural.
As most readers of this book no doubt already know, Supernatural follows demon-hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester as they travel the United States in a beautiful black ’67 Chevy Impala, carrying on “the family business”: saving people, hunting things. The show has been around so long that it premiered on the long-defunct WB Network back in 2005, and has been on its successor network, the CW, ever since. It’s a scary show about monsters and the apocalypse, and it’s also a surprisingly emotional show about love and family and the need to always keep fighting no matter the odds. The combination has brought Supernatural unexpected and enduring popularity. Doesn’t hurt that it stars actors who are gorgeous (and talented) enough to make you wonder whether they’re real.