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The cult horror novel series Supernatural[i] saw some success between the years 2005-2009 but otherwise retained its status as pulp horror fiction beloved for its main characters Sam and Dean, monster hunting brothers, that in each book share a moment of bonding at the end of each book. The series devoted female fans make up a majority of the fanbase, claiming to be drawn to the characters ability to “share their feelings with each other in times of hardship,” states one long time fan Becky Rosen, in an interview I had with her recently in which she revealed a short but intimate relationship with the creator of the series Supernatural, Carver Edlund. The relationship between the main characters and their ability to share their feelings is an aspect, often praised amongst fans of the books, and one that is contentious in so called fandomspace. Most criticizing the lampshading of the brother’s relationship as romantic, and that the series writer Mr. Edlund should have added more female characters instead of killing them off. Criticism aside it seems a strong contingent of the Supernatural fanbase, despite, overwhelming disapproval from the real world, began “shipping” the brothers in a romantic (and sexual) relationship.
In our interview with some embarrassment Mrs. Rosen admits to having shipped the brothers, “I didn’t see Sam as a real person, only as character. Now I know he’s real, like the rest of us.” While being a fan of the cult horror series as an impressionable teen Mrs. Rosen, started the first Supernatural Convention and is recognized in online forums as a prolific fanfiction writer. Though her fanfiction no longer features Sam and Dean (commonly referred to as Slash by fans) in an incestuous relationship, she writes what is called “fluff”, a subgenre that mainly revolves around characters well, engaging in fluffy moments, Mrs. Rosen explains, “I just want to see the brothers, well, folding laundry. I don’t like monsters anymore.” For good reason I think, as we approach murkier topics, such as that first Supernatural Convention, which ended in tragedy.
I did my digging before setting up the interview with Mrs. Rosen, I already knew[1] about her relationship with Carver Edlund and the incident at Supernatural Con in 2009. I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist, strange circumstances seem to follow Becky Rosen, and the Supernatural books. Fictional murders executed by demons, vampires, and wendigos, seem to occur real life. Spending years pouring over police reports and newspapers, reveals to me, evidence of unethical practices used by Carver Edlund to inspire his stories, using the tragedies of real-life victims and inserting them in his books for entertainment[2]. Yet, the tragic events of Supernatural Con in 2009, reveals interesting evidence to the contrary. Mrs. Rosen insists that the events of Supernatural Con were ordinary in nature, but the death of a devoted fan speaks volumes. Her silence speaks louder as I cannot extract anything more than a non-answer. Though her discomfort shows Mrs. Rosen knows something, but what she won’t reveal.
I move on to more difficult topics. The leaked books, Mrs. Rosen released in Edlund’s absence, without his permission. Though she made no monetary gain from them – having posted them on LiveJournal - many fans see it as a breach of trust, and question once again her involvement in the incident at Supernatural Con.
Most fans claim Mrs. Rosen has plagiarized Supernatural even if she didn’t intend to, publishing the stories was the same as stealing them from Edlund. Though the living status of Mr. Edlund remains unknown, Mrs. Rosen had no legal right to publish the remaining stories, if Edlund intended to publish them he would have done so.
Another group[3] of fans however believes thinks Rosen was not in the wrong, citing that Edlund had written the stories, so that alone was proof of intention. The group, going so far as to claim
[1] I must admit this investigation is becoming quite labyrinthine, with each new revelation I grow increasingly befuddled. Carver Edlund is not even the author of Supernatural’s real name, he hides under the pseudonym. Though I can’t figure why, none of his fans have ever had the gall to threaten the man. I’ve only ever seen his face once, and even then, I couldn’t recall anything about him, besides the fact that he had a beard, and was terribly nervous. After, the disappearance of Carver Edlund in 2006 from Kripke Hollow, Becky Rosen filed a police report stating herself as his girlfriend, even though witnesses at Supernatural Con months before claimed they heard her break up with him. Was there foul play involved no one knows for sure. In the police report, Becky Rosen, pens Edlund’s name simply as Chuck Shurley , Becky was the only person who knew him as anything other than his pseudonym yet she can offer no other answers to us, the fans, as to the truth.
[2]But before we go on to analyze the important role of this fictitious work of his within the novel, some preliminary considerations regarding this character would seem to be in order. In Slaughterhouse-Five Trout still has more or less the same physical appearance as in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), in which he made his literary debut: he has "a full beard" and the look of "a cracked messiah", not unlike a "prisoner of war" (167). However, his personality has become more pessimistic and embittered. Trout's frustration is due to the fact that he has spent his whole life "opening the window and making love to the world" (169), and yet proved unable to change anything. The only apparent result is that he now feels "friendless and despised" (111). This sensation of impotence turns Trout into an ironic character, as is made evident in a dialogue between him and Maggie White in the course of a party. Here, Trout takes advantage of Maggie's ingenuousness to comment that everything he writes about is real, since "If I wrote something that hadn't really happened, and tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That's fraud" (171). These words appear even more ironic if it is borne in mind that "most of Trout's novéis, after all, dealt with time warps and extrasensory perception and other unexpected things" (175). As a science-fiction writer Trout is unknown to the critics, since his books only serve as "window dressing" in porn-shops. Eliot Rosewater, who reappears in Slaughterhouse-Five, is "the only person who ever heard of him" (110). This character, though a fervent admirer of his novéis, admits that "Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good" (110). Trout himself goes even further when he states that "He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way" (169)
[3] An eccentric group that simply refer to themselves as the Believers, who believe in the Author God (see footnote 4) and the authority of the author as God. The groups numbers grew as events in the book mirrored natural disasters that occurred in real life, the physical world, in 2010. As earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides shook the earth, conspiracy grew, and belief solidified. Did this convergence of events, the illegitimate publication of Edlund’s – the Author God – and the natural disasters that occurred, open a pandora’s box. Occam’s razor begs to be considered, but the events that took place at Supernatural Con, have to be taken into consideration. The mystery like a blank space waiting to be filled constricts tighter. Winding down narrower and narrower paths, of which I follow, empty hallways twisting and turning like a snake, getting increasingly lost in its depths. The darkness encroaches at my back.
I follow, but something follows me back, dogging my every step.
that Edlund must have known he would not be there to publish them, since Mrs. Rosen was in one of the stories.
(the young man in the novel- but, in fact, how old is he and who is he? - wants to write but cannot; the novel ends when writing at last becomes possible) – Barthes[1]
mystery like a blank space waiting to be filled constricts tighter. Winding down narrower and narrower paths, of which I follow, empty hallways twisting and turning like a snake, getting increasingly lost in its depths. The darkness encroaches at my back.
I follow, but something is follows me back, dogging my every step.
[1]The removal of the Author (one could talk here with·
Brecht of a veritable 'distancing', the Author diminishing
like a figurine at the far end of the literary stage) is not
merely an historical fact or an act of writing; it utterly
transforms the modern text (or - which is the same thing -
the text is henceforth made and read in such a way that at
all its levels the author is absent). The temporality is different.
The Author, when believed in, is always conceived of as" the
past of his own book: book and author stand automatically "
on a single" divided into a before and an after. The
Author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that
he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it, is in the same
relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his child.
In complete contrast, the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with
the book as predicate; there is no other time than that of the
enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now.
The fact is (or, it follows) that writing can no longer designate an operation of recording, notation, representation, 'depiction' (as the Classics would say); rather, it designates
exactly what linguists, referring to Oxford philosophy, call a
performative, a rare verbal form (exclusively given in the
first person and in the present tense) in which the enunciation
has no other content (contains no other proposition)
than the act by which it is uttered - something like the I
declare of kings or the I sing of very ancient poets. Having
buried the Author, the modem scriptor can thus no longer
believe, as according to the pathetic view of his predecessors,
that this hand is too slow for his thought or passion and that
consequently, making a law of necessity, he must emphasize
this delay and indefinitely 'polish' his form. For him, on
the contrary, the hand, cut off from any voice, borne by a
pure gesture of inscription (and not of expression), traces a
field without origin - or which, at least, has no other origin
than language itself, language which ceaselessly calls into
question all origins.
We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing
a 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none' of them original, blend and clash. The text
is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres
of culture.
Mrs. Rosen claims no previous knowledge of the self-insertion and her own appearance in the online publication – until she read them herself. Expressing genuine surprise recalling the memory of reading the story. Admitting that when she read it Mrs. Rosen feared that Edlund had not been a healthy state of mind, as she related a story of his alcoholism and anxiety. As she tells the story, Mrs. Rosen begins crying, sobbing in grief, I watch as she wipes away tears. I hand her a box of tissues.
After a short break we resume the interview.
Mrs. Rosen refuses to answer any of my questions.
Firstly, Supernatural’s narrative exhibits a conventional format, where characters live in a fictional world and act out fictional plotlines. However, there are some episodes that call into question their boundaries by contrasting the fantasy world and that of the “real world” (the fictional world of the story). These are episodes where the writers slowly break the illusionism little by little but not totally. The characters move within the plotline from the “real world” to the “fantasy world,” but they never address the camera or step out of character. Thus the viewer is simply an outside observer looking into this two world diegetic1 story. These alternate realities — a convention of the fantasy genre — occur for the first time in “What Is, and What Should Never Be,” (2.20) where Dean is attacked by a djinn, a kind of genie from Arabian mythology, that knocks people out and makes them dream peacefully. Dean enters a fantasy world without demons where his mother is alive and his relationship with Sam is cold and distant. While this alternate reality is in many ways preferable, he comes to realize that it is not real and he needs to wake up. This narrative strategy causes a stinging melancholy for a life that might have been but is not. Something similar happens in “It’s a Terrible Life” (4.17) in which the brothers live dull and boring lives in an alternate reality. This time, a number of hinge elements present in both universes — such as the Ghostfacers’ website or the Winchesters’ recurring dreams of hunting things — cause them to become aware of existing in a parallel world. An even more hallucinatory dream takes place in “When the Levee Breaks” (4.21), in which Sam is confined in order to overcome his addiction to demon blood and, in full withdrawal, imagines being tortured by Alastair, visited by a young Sammy, and supported by his mother. There is still a final, diegetic leap into an alternate reality in “Dark Side of the Moon” (5.16) when the Winchesters are killed and relive happy memories in a heavenly journey through their pasts. “How are we in Heaven?” Sam asks Dean, surprised by the new geographical surroundings .This juxtaposition of “fictional” and “real worlds” does not want to make the viewer aware that he or she is watching a TV show, but rather to reinforce to the viewer that the character has come from “reality” and has moved to a “fictional reality.” This is just the first degree of playing with the illusion. In this cartography, I
I search deep into the lore, like Sam and Dean, I join the Believer’s as we pour over the text for clues of Sam and Dean in the physical world. The book becoming our Bible, the Author, our God. We roleplay, becoming Sam and Dean. I likened it to the nativity plays I was forced to participate in childhood. I hated it then, the tacky wings, and halo, how I had to stand in front of the whole congregation, all watching as single entity. Stained glass windows bending multi-colored light down upon me. Cracked appearance of the glass, like the many facets of God. The pews curving toward me in a semi-circle, facing the altar in adoration of Jesus.
Strange how you always come back to the rituals of childhood, in fear of God or our parent’s disappointment it matters little.
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I’m beginning to fear something is watching
me
I started this. No, I can’t – how did I get
here.
Everything is JUMBLED and
WRONG.
Someone is watching you. It’s happened to all of us, they are looking at the side of your face, you know they are looking. You can feel it, you don’t know how, you just do. Feel it, I mean. You don’t do anything about it though, because to look at the onlooker, the oogler, would be to confirm your very real suspicions – and they are real. To confirm it would mean you have to do something about it. And you don’t want to look, don’t want to do something about it, even though, all your instincts demand you do so. Even the most evolved prey animal looks at the predator breathing down their neck. That’s it.
It’s right behind you.
Breathing, you can feel it, wet and hot.
It’s too late to look or you’ll see it. See its face, and my God, you have no idea what it is, but you can’t move, can’t look because then you’ll have to do something about it. And you can’t do anything about this beast, stalking you in the maze of your own mind.
Do you see now?
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Sam and Dean approached the run-down, ramshackle
house with trepidation. Did they really want to learn the
secrets that lay beyond that door? Sam and Dean traded
soulful looks. Then, with determination, Dean pushed the
doorbell with forceful determination.
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The longer I dig into the mysteries surrounding Supernatural Con and embed myself within the Believers I wonder. Am I killing God, the Author? Did he not already die when he disappeared on that fateful day and die again, when Becky posted the stories, effectively killing him in absentia. Is resurrection possible through the aid of belief? Can a fan, a believer, a worshipper, revive the dead author? Or are they undying, immortal beings? Made immortal by the mere existence of their canon.
Is it sin to alter the Canon? To question its contents? Paradise Lost, and Dante became their own canon, legitimate in their own rights. Milton created a concept of Hell that was so terrifying to Christians that it became the widely accepted imagery of Hell from then on. Before then there was no physicality to Hell, even Milton has a Before and After in his canon.
When God spoke the Bible into existence, did He know humanity would kill Him?
Endings are hard. Any chapped-ass monkey with a keyboard can poop out a beginning, but endings are impossible. You try to tie up every loose end, but you never can. The fans are always gonna bitch. There’s always gonna be holes. And since it’s the ending, it’s all supposed to add up to something. I’m telling you: they’re a raging pain in the ass.
– Carver Edlund{5]
[5] These words are a farewell from Supernatural’s author, both in fiction and in reality. In fiction the writer acts like a god. Kripke, the creator of the series, says goodbye from the mouth of Chuck, his alter-ego. Kripke’s characters have grown so much and achieved such success that they are now more important than the author and can emancipate themselves. Through Chuck, Kripke affirms that things have gone as far as they can go, as he had announced would be the case as he told Entertatinment Weekly: “Despite what the network and studio may or may not want, I don’t have more than five seasons of story.” And he does it by leaving clues as to how his series will end: in Lawrence, closing the tragic circle, epically facing Lucifer — their greatest enemy — and with Sam sacrificing himself to save Dean. But then Kripke deliberately and clumsily resurrects his characters (Bobby, Castiel, and finally Sam) in a deus ex machina that enables another “God-creator” (Sera Gamble) to continue the series. For this reason too, Chuck/Kripke ends up fading into just another implausible and anti-illusionistic plot twist after typing “The End.”
[i] When the seller of the “Golden Comic” bookshop describes the protagonists of the novels written by Carver Edlund, viewers share the surprise of Sam and Dean, the protagonists of Supernatural, the tv show. With the characters’ realization that their own lives are being reflected in the books, the illusionist mirror created by this fantasy series of horror and adventure is shattered.
The fictional sources, in contrast, reinforce the imaginary scope of the novel, "highlighting our need for fantasy in the cruel and absurd world depicted in the historical quotes" (Loeb 95). However, the quotes, references and extracts in this particular category can be subjected to internal subdivisión. On the one hand, Slaughterhouse-Five contains numerous direct or indirect allusions to works by such authors as Horace, Crane, Céline, Dostoyevski and Theodore Roethke, which from a different thematic perspective illustrate and expand upon some of the basic questions dealt with in the novel: time, death, free will, etc. But together with these fictional-literary sources, Vonnegut also introduces a series of textual references to strictly imaginary works, that is to say those invented by the author and quoted by him as if they were actual published sources.2 Within this latter group—the main object of our attention in this paper—particular importance is attached to the intertextualization of six science-fiction stories, the author of which is none other than the charismatic Kilgore Trout. But before we go on to analyze the important role of this fictitious work of his within the novel, some preliminary considerations regarding this character would seem to be in order - Jesús Lerate de Castro Universidad de Sevilla
Illusionism, argues Robert Stam, “pretends to be something more than mere artistic production; it presents its characters as real people, its sequence of words or images as real time, and its representations as substantiated fact” (1). But what happens in the “The Monster at the End of This Book” is not an isolated occurrence. Because one of the 147 breaking the mirror most unique narrative strategies of Supernatural is the way it creates a break with the mirror that characterizes traditional fiction and turns it in upon itself, underscoring its own fictitiousness. This rupture occurs, in varying degrees, throughout the entire series and proves essential in the Winchesters’ battle against the army of darkness. Breaking the Mirror Metafictional Strategies in Supernatural. Alberto N. Garcia