The show Supernatural is Great, but the fans are Ableist Dicks!

Background

Supernatural ran for 15 seasons and spawned many memorable quotes, one of which is, “Family don’t end with blood.” The quote inspired the title of a book surrounding the Supernatural fandom, and you can buy any kind of merchandise with the quote printed on it. I’ve tried a few times over the years to enter the fandom and enjoy the kinship so many of the fans seem to enjoy, but so much of the interaction is visual that I had trouble finding my place there.

Enter Discord

I decided to see if there was a Discord server for fans of the show. I’ve had great success joining communities through Discord, even the heavily visual ones. The biggest reason is that topics of conversation are so compartmentalized on the platform that I can easily avoid memes, undescribed fan art and other visual noise. A quick internet search turned up the official Discord server for fans of supernatural. I joined, answered the questions, chose my roles and crafted an introduction.

The trouble

I was chatting with some people online and things were going well, when someone complimented me on my profile picture (PFP) and asked if it was my own creation. I responded that the concept was mine, but the drawing was done with generative AI. Someone called a bunch of people into the chat, and when I told other users I was blind and couldn’t draw, I got everything from questions asking what could I see if I’m blind, to stop making up excuses and throw some work to the starving artists who live in the server.

Before long, I was getting dozens of replies and was unable to keep up. I let them know that the message behind the show was that it’s humanity—even the blind people—against the not human stuff and they should all be ashamed of themselves.

conclusion

There’s always going to be a place in my heart for the show and characters on “Supernatural”, but I have no use for the idiot fans. On the upside, I feel better about the show’s ending now, as I know it pissed a lot of them off. I don’t think I’ll be joining more social spaces any time soon—the world’s scary enough without having to deal with ableist dicks. If I do, I guess I’ll just have to stick to Star Wars.