#the previously mentioned inclusion of sam within trainings

[aliusfrater]

[rkhemlani]

June 16th - Arashiyama Bamboo Forest and Monkey Park

Nico and I skipped breakfast again this morning and slept in a little bit. We knew there was going to be a quiz, so we reviewed the readings one more time before Professor Smith’s announcement at 9:00 am (we are familiar with your tactics Dr. Smith). Prior to fully entering the bamboo forest, we stopped at a love shrine, because the last one we tried to visit was closed. Professor Smith recalled my previous joke saying that I need the love shrine really badly, which I thought was funny. I already know I drank from the Romance Stream of water from the Kannon temple a couple days ago, so I didn’t want to ruin my odds. As we strolled through the bamboo forest, we saw a man playing this extremely soothing disc instrument that I had seen on Instagram before (I don’t know the name of it). We continued along and of course Vishnu and I found an extremely photogenic spot to take pics along the water, which oddly reminded us of what we thought Vietnam would look like. I wanted to go for a swim so bad. After that we broke for lunch, where Vishnu, Chelsea, Sam (the boy), and I all went to a ramen place that was a solid 7/10. After that I got Chelsea coffee and myself coffee and she repaid me by buying me a yummy strawberry ice cream. I think that’s like at least five different people I have gotten to buy me ice cream. Vishnu and I took more pics on the bridge, and we met back up with the group for a hike up to a monkey park. There, we took more pics as a group, fed monkeys peanuts for 50 yen, and enjoyed the wonderful views above Kyoto. It’s kinda sad that the trip is going to be over in a couple days, because we have a really weird, yet fun group. We headed back down the mountain and a group of us (Boy Sam, Girl Sam, Eliza, Vishnu, Chelsea, Casey, Julie, Nico, Aulora, and I) stopped at another coffee shop where we chit chatted, had overrated drinks, and reminisced the trip. We took the train back, Nico and I napped, and then we met downstairs to go to a rooftop bar. I had a good talk with Casey about our favorite parts of the trip and what we missed the most from back home. Unfortunately, I led the group to an overpacked bar as I had forgotten it was Friday and it was happening. I felt bad for making everyone walk for half an hour. On the way back, Julie and I talked about the way our Asian parents punished us as kids and we offered each other restaurant recommendations in Miami/Broward. I love when people give new spots for me to try in Miami. We stopped at Family Mart for snacks and some of us played Uno in our room to end the night which was nice. Nico and I also played heads-up poker after everyone had left, because we are dying to play when we get back to Miami. I hope this group can be able to meet up in Gainesville for a party or a function later on this year.

Academic Reflection

Today one of our readings was on “The Tale of Genji”, which I had read parts of previously in my Self and Society in East Asia quest course during the Spring of my freshman year. It was a great read and an even better read now. The entire plot revolves around the romantic adventures of Genji, the son of the emperor who exiles himself after committing some wrongdoings. It was interesting to visit the place where he had his affair with Lady Rokujo. The story is considered to be the world’s first novel and is a classic piece of literature. It was enlightening to be able to picture the settings described in the story and I was glad that we were able to visit said place.

The other reading discussed the importance of preservation for the bamboo forest. I found it particularly compelling the way the article mentioned the inclusion of nature within city planning. I wish we had this back in Miami, where there aren’t many large parks that are nature based other than protected ocean reefs. We were able to see dense and luscious forests that were located in the middle of Kyoto when we were at the monkey park on top of the mountain.

[lets-steal-an-archive]

Supernatural’s “Silent Majority” and Hating Misha Collins

Excerpted from: Chin, B. (2019). When hated characters talk back: Twitter, hate, and fan/celebrity interaction. In M. Click (Ed.) Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age. NYU Press. Google Books preview: 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 307, 308.

New characters are commonly introduced to long-running shows for a variety of reasons: to tell additional stories (e.g., when a lead actor eaves prior to the show’s end or when the stories are too dependent on a small group of characters) or to introduce a love interest for a lead character. These additions and changes sometimes divide fandoms, splintering fan groups into those who love, and those who hate, the changes.

Supernatural debuted on the CW [sic] in 2005. In its fourteenth season at the time of this writing, the show tells the story of Dean Winchester (played by Jensen Ackles) and Sam Winchester (played by Jared Padalecki), brothers who were trained by their father to hunt and kill supernatural beings after their mother was brutally murdered by a demon. Supporting characters in the form of love interests, other hunters, and demons have dropped in and out of the Winchester brothers’ nomadic lives, but it is their relationship with one another that drives the show’s main storyline. In the season 4 (2008) premiere, a new character in the form of an angel, Castiel (played by Misha Collins), was introduced and subsequently added to the main cast(4) thus introducing a storyline featuring the battle between angels and demons, which became deeply embedded into Supernatural’s overarching mythology.

The show’s online fandom is largely based on the website LiveJournal, which hosts numerous online communities for episodic discussions and the archival coverage of fan-creative works like icons, fan videos, and fan fiction(5). Tumblr has also become a popular platform for the fandom, particularly for image-based posts such as GIFsets. Aside from LiveJournal and Tumblr, a collaborative website in the form of Wikipedia known as Super-Wiki (hosted at www.supernaturalwiki.com) is also popular, documenting news and information on the show, the cast and crew, convention reports, as well as the norms, culture, and practices of the fandom.

As the show features a predominately male cast, slash parings -- particularly that of Sam/Dean (known collectively as “Wincest”) and Dean/Castiel (”Destiel”) -- are popular with fans(6). The two fan groups often have a publicly antagonistic relationship, with fans competing for each paring’s popularity on Internet polls and for legitimization from the producers. On the one hand, Destiel supporters argue that writers and producers imbue Dean and Castiel’s interactions with innuendo, which are then not followed through in then show. While Collins (Castiel) has openly engaged in conversations with fans about Destiel at numerous fan conventions and events, others (including the producers and Jensen Ackles, who plays Dean) appear to be less receptive of this fan reading, with Ackles frequently refusing to answer any questions related to the pairing or Dean’s sexuality at conventions(7).

On the other hand, some fans see Wincest at the accepted pairing in canon, as episodes such as the fourth season “The Monster at the End of the Book” (airdate April 2, 2009) addressed the show’s fandom directly, making tongue-in-cheek references to Wincest. Fans have been divided by the episode, according to Laura Felschow (2010, para. 1.2), with some viewing it as “playful and inclusive” while others see its representation of slash (Wincest) as “harsh and demeaning.” The show’s nods to Wincest, and the producers’ continual tease on Destiel, led to fans’ constant struggle for their reading of the text to be legitimated by producers and recognized as canon(8). Castiel is often credited by the popular press as a fan favorite, but some fans, however, view the inclusion of Castiel as an impediment to the development of Sam’s storyline and to the Wincest paring(9), particularly when Destiel supporters frequently campaign for the recognition of their paring online and during conventions, confronting producers on their refusal to embrace the Destiel paring but continuing to tease fans with homoerotic subtext anyway(10). This has often resulted in ire, not just directed at Destiel shippers but also at Castiel (and by extension, Misha Collins, the actor). This character has seen the formulation of such groups as the “SPN Silent Majority,” established at the end of the show’s seventh season in 2012 by fans who felt that the writing quality on Supernatural had declined and that the addition of Castiel (as well as other supporting characters) robbed “the emotional resonance and quality” (SPN Silent Majority 2012a) of the show. These Castiel anti-fans believe the show should be grounded in the relationship between the Winchester brothers, rather than those with other supporting characters (in particular, Castiel, whose friendship with Dean forms an integral part of the show’s story arc in later seasons). Although SPN Silent Majority’s strategy involved writing to the show’s producers, studio and network, as well as directly tweeting Supernatural’s executive producers and writers, the campaign was linked to a “I hate Misha Collins Day” movement. Anonymous messages were left on Supernatural fans’ Tumblr blogs announcing an organized effort to vocalize and share the hate by tweeting the CW, the network’s publicist, and the show’s producers, calling for Collins (Castiel) to be removed permanently from the show. In retaliation, the actor’s fans organized a “We Love Misha” countermovement and reported a suspected Twitter account for spreading hate speech(11). As the Twitter hate campaign caught the attention of several Internet-based entertainment websites(12), SPN Silent Majority, who was accused of organizing the actions, declared the campaign to be a hoax spread by Destiel shippers to subvert their campaign to restore the show to its original focus on the brothers:

We’ve seen over and over again how determined one group of fans on one side of the ship war is trying to pull us into their trenches. ... After a week of these attacks, our theory is that a handful of fans are trying to hold parts of the fandom in a chokehold have been proven true. These are very dirty tactics and have no place in a community. [SPN Silent Majority 2012b]

The attention to the “I Hate Misha Collins Day” brought on by the reports on Internet-based entertainment sites and fans tweeting the actors directly also caught the attention of several cast members, such as Jim Beaver (Bobby Singer) and Richard Speight, Jr. (The Trickster/Gabriel), who, along with Collins, tweeted in response to the fans’ action of spreading hate (Beaver #1, #2, #3, #4; Speight #1; Collins #1).

Alice Marwick and danah boyd argue that part of Twitter’s appeal for fans is the perception that fans get direct access to celebrities and are able to interact with them: “Famous people mention fans to perform connection and availability, give back to loyal followers, and manage their popularity” (Markwick and boyd 2011, 145). The proliferation and immediacy of the medium also makes it a good tool for fans to organize campaigns, as both the “I Hate Misha Collins” and “We Love Misha” movements make Twitter their main platform for spreading the hate (and love). The media industry’s presence on the platform -- the CW network, its publicity department, Supernatural’s producers, and many of the show’s regular and recurring cast members -- makes Twitter a convenient space in which frustrated fans can air their grievances. In this case, Twitter is also used to counteract the anti-fan campaign to have Collins (Castiel) fired, as well as to call out the fan faction that is unhappy about his inclusion to the cast.

By tweeting the cast members directly and informing them of the hate some fan faction were determined to spread, fans were highlighting the hate to others who may have no knowledge of the campaign previously, potentially inciting interfactional hate within the Supernatural fandom as fans rushed to defend the show, its producers, and cast members. The hate campaign towards Misha Collins (Castiel) exemplifies the complex makeup of fan identity, whereby hate is very intricately linked to love. SPN Silent Majority’s campaign, it can be argued, stems from altruism: to return the show to its original emphasis (i.e., the brothers), thus calling for the exclusion of, or reduced screen time for, other characters whom they see as a threat and impediment to the advancement of the original storyline and, more important, the brothers’ relationship. In this case, it can be argued that fans adopted the strategies of anti-fandom to try and sway media producers to support their readings of the text. The actions of the Castiel haters resemble the definition of anti-fans advanced by Theodoropoulou (2007), whereby the fan becomes an anti-fan of the object (in this case, the character and, by extension, the actor) that threatens their love of the source text.

Collins’ tweet above could be interpreted as a way of telling anti-fans that his position in the show is secure and that the hate campaigns would not affect him in any way (i.e., the fans are powerless). Having said that, despite the public rebuttal of the hate campaign by the actors, none of the fans involved were individually named or tagged (on Twitter) by the actors who commented on the issue.

[...]

Derek Johnson asserts that “fans attack and criticize media producers whom they feel threaten their meta-textual interests” (Johnson 2007, 298), but I argue that through social media, fan frustrations can also manifest toward actors who portray characters whom they hate and feel are taking attention away from other beloved characters or pose a threat to fans’ favorite pairings. With the proliferation of social media networks like Twitter, fans are increasingly taking their frustrations with storylines and characterizations directly to media producers and actors on the platform, utilizing official hashtags as well as organizing hate campaigns to make their feelings known.

But just as hate campaigns such as Supernatural fandom’s “I Hate Misha Collins Day” can be organized, or anti-fans of H50′s Catherine Rollins can appropriate the show’s hashtag to criticize her character, fans opposed to the hate can likewise bring the actor’s attention to the hate, as Supernatural fans did when they alerted the show’s actors active on Twitter to the Misha Collins hate campaign. Likewise, the actors can choose to respond directly (in the case of Michelle Borth) or indirectly (as in Misha Collins). Both cases show that fandom can very often shift into anti-fandom when fans feel their concerns and opinions about the show and its direction are not being taken seriously by those involved in the production. This isn’t to say that fans shifting emotions toward their favorite shows are anything new; rather, the case studies above indicate that social media networks like Twitter and Tumblr have enabled fans to organize hate and counterhate (as well as save-the-show) campaigns, and just as much as Twitter is used by fans to express their love toward a show, character, or actor, social media networks are also used to express frustration, dislike, and hate toward actors and producers. What is also distinct is that social media like Twitter provide a platform with which actors and producers can directly respond to these expressions of hate and love.

--

4. For some fans, the inclusion of Castiel intervenes with the family dynamics of Sam and Dean, as Castiel was introduced as Dean’s savior, fans felt Sam was sidelined to develop Dean and Castiel’s connection and friendship.

5. The show also has an active offline fandom that centers on conventions (with the first Supernatural-centered convention occurring in Chicago in 2007) in various cities across North America, as well as in Europe, Australia, and South America. These conventions occur throughout the year and often have cast attendance. A collection of some Supernatural fan fiction has also moved to the website Archive of Our Own (https://archiveofourown.org) which, as of May 2014, stores close to seventy thousand stories (with over twenty-five thousand of those stories featuring the slash pairing Destiel), while the website Fanfiction (www.fanfiction.net) has around ninety-four thousand stories.

6. Catherine Tosenberger argues that Supernatural’s format alludes to to classic male buddy series like Starsky and Hutch, and “the fact that Sam and Dean are brothers in no way detracts from the slashy vibe. In fact, as brothers, they are given a pass for displays of emotion that masculinity in our culture usually forbids, which intensifies the potential for queer readings” (Tosenberger 2008, para 1.2).

7. Supernatural Wiki (n.d.) has documented some of the earlier exchanges in the show that comment on the relationship between Dean and Castiel, including the reception of the pairing among producers and the cast. Misha Collins (Castiel) has also spoken at length in an interview about why he engages with fans on the topic with Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis (2014). Fans who want the pairing acknowledged as canon have accused the producers of “queerbaiting” -- a term, as described by the website Fanlore, used by fans to describe the “perceived attempt by canon creators ... to woo queer fans by introducing a character whose sexuality seems, early on, to be coded as something other than one hundred percent heterosexual (Fanlore, n.d.). For an example of this kind of discussion, which is a complicated issue that I do not have the space to get into here, see Veronika K. (2013).

8. “The Monster at the End of the Book” is by no means the only episode that features a representation of Supernatural’s fandom. In the course of the show’s airing history, six other episodes have referred to, or commented on, the show’s fanbase, represented through the recurring character of Becky.

9. I’m not suggesting here that fans who hate Castiel are immediately supporters of Wincest, Rather, there are also fans who felt that the inclusion of Castiel intervenes with the brothers’ story, specifically, that Sam’s characterization is often sacrificed for the development of Dean and Castiel.

10. A recent public confrontation among fans, anti-fans, and the producers can be seen during CW’s Supernatural promotion for the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, which resulted in CW having to cancel the #AskSupernatural hashtag on Twitter. The incident was reported by Cruz (2014) and Romano (2014).

11. See, e.g., Sup3rnatural (n.d.) for an example of a “We Hate Misha Collins Day” declaration. Also see r/Supernatural (n.d.); and Wilken (2012).

12. In a possible separate lead-up to these events, threats toward Misha Collins were sent anonymously to various Castiel fans and Destiel shippers, intimating that the actor be set on fire. See r/Supernatural (n.d.); and Wilken (2012).