Blood will Flow

Sounds like a potential spin off, don't it?

Anyhow, as requested by cmadebyme_x, here's what I remember of my entry into the wonderful world of Supernatural.

Sometime in 2009 I ended up with a box set of Seasons 1-3. I can't remember how or who recommended it, or why I decided to watch, but obviously I did, and was hooked from the Pilot. I remember when SPN was advertised on UK TV with the scary just got sexy tag line. I had thought the two leads looked rather tasty, but this was horror, folks, and not for me.



So anyhow, I watched the DVDs, and yup, this WAS for me after all. I was in love with Dean from the very start, and Sam grew on me as his story unfolded. Stargate Atlantis had petered out, so wham, welcome new and overwhelming obsession.

Somewhere along the way I found a small Facebook group called Insane Old Ladies over 40 who love supernatural (yeah, catchy title) and bingo. Fandom. It was a revelation. One of my IOLs was a fanfic writer on ff.net; we got chatting about writing and the next thing I knew I was churning out drabbles and writing stories and discovered that the stuff I'd been doing for Atlantis in my head, and way before that for Alias Smith and Jones, and Star Trek, and the 1930s Magnet comics, was in fact also fanfiction and fanart. So all that time I'd spent growing up thinking I was alone, I could have been participating. Huh. Who knew? it was a revelation.

Not that I'd ever been so immersed in anything before, and I honestly can't imagine ever doing this again. Though I had loved TV shows before - the ones I've already mentioned, for instance - none of them really got to me like SPN has done. I'd never have wanted to delve into anything about the real actors behind the characters before. Though I did harbour a massive crush on Pete Duel, he was dead almost before I started watching ASJ - plus I was only eleven at the time!

Thanks to my FB group, one of whom had a regular seat at Chicon, I bought a ticket to the 2010 Chicon and booked myself a scary solo trip to the USA. I drove on the wrong side of the road for the first time. I went to the Mesa Verde and Nashville on my own, met up with a Tenessee girl and roadtripped in her Mustang up to Chicago, met up with the other IOL who showed us the ropes at the convention, toured Chicago with one of the other IOLs who lived an hour away, and bumped into Jared and Genevieve shopping on the Magnificent Mile.

In practice for Chicon I went to Collector Mania in London and met Misha and Julie Niven. I then got a ticket for Asylum 4, as another practice run. Now I was hooked on conventions as well as SPN. I was doomed from that day forth. Now I have lovely friends all over the world. I have you guys. I've been to something like 30 conventions (of varying sorts but mostly SPN 3 dayers). I've written hundreds of drabbles and dozens of longer fics. I've written a novel (original fic and an ambition I've had since I was a child). I've learned to draw digitally and relearned traditional drawing. My life is enriched immeasurably by my SPN friendships and my creativity has been revived, and though in the same time period I've put on loads of weight and lost a lot of people I love, overall I feel blessed.

Supernatural holds a special place in my heart, and the SPN fandom will be a hard one to follow.