For our dear readers from all over, here goes:

The Minions are loosing ground. Not sure what the score is, but I have seen it happen with my own two eyes. More and more Minions are converting over, as the Legion has (according  to the facebook group) better cookies!

During a recent recruiting party (they like to call Meet & Greet, but were not fooled here) both Castiel (Misha Collins) and Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino) met with prospective applicants for both the dark and the light side.

All Images courtesy of Rogue Events 2010 – www.rogueevents.co.uk

During a later stand-off on stage, the verbal winner (quote Mark: “There is a time for talking and a time to kick somebodies ass“) was clearly Mark with the winning statement: Is that a Minion in your pants or are you just happy to see me?

Seriously, I would pay money to see them both tour as a comedy duo! Their Improv skills are phenomenal.

Only one question remains: Which side are YOU on?

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George Lucas has apparently sent a letter (no, not to us!) and we quote:

“Don’t tell anyone,” Lucas wrote, “but when ‘Star Wars’ first came out, I didn’t know where it was going either. The trick is to pretend you’ve planned the whole thing out in advance. Throw in some father issues and references to other stories — let’s call them ‘homages’ — and you’ve got a series.”

Now, to some of you in the good old Fandom of SUPERNATURAL (should it still exist) this may sound like something you can refer to. Many times Fandom has made the connection between SUPERNATURAL and STAR WARS (as can be read here) but maybe much to your disappointment, this comment was not directed at SUPERNATURAL or its creator Eric Kripke, but at the makers of LOST, a hugely successful show with a season finale up and coming this very weekend.

The real question this raises or me is: IF you have seen one plot, can’t you simply figure out every other plot by relating them all to one another? And at what point does a TV show stop being unique and original and becomes predictable and therefore boring? Are we done and have we tried everything so we’re just bored now seeing the same old themes over and over for two generations at least? And does this mean, that if you are still surprised by a shows “sudden turn” or “outcome”, you haven’t either paying attention to the subtle hints, or you haven’t seen enough or you simply don’t care?

A not so recent episode of  BOSTON LEGAL (“Juiced”) has, much to my delight, sued American TV Networks for NOT showing enough shows for senior citizen. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not a senior myself (far from it) and a kid at heart, but I fully agree with the pledge. What was said is so true. Young, beautiful people act like experienced professionals in a job for which they’d have to study at least 10 more years in the real world…or until they are maybe not so pretty anymore. High School girls play hard-assed private detectives, while in my childhood a man of 40 with a mustache and and a military background was the perfect and most experienced person, suitable enough to portray a realistic  private detective (as far as “real” is concerned in LaLaLand). The general life expectancy if you will, has been lowered from mid 30s to mid 20s – 10 years lost. While humans never lived longer, we also revert back to a world where you are being told your life is over once you reached 30. Maybe a show like LOST was nice to see, as most actors where, still pretty to look at, not so young. And the plot required you to pay attention and stay sharp. Who says we need to be told all the answers? Why are we not willing to think for ourselves anymore?

The plot of SUPERNATURAL started out great – I didn’t watch it from the start as the ads put me of thinking “Not another teeny show with pretty faces” – but I caught up with the first season pretty fast and until fans had the whole discussion about whether Dean was going to hell or not (predictaaaaable!) I was really enjoying it. Then the next season came and brought in Angels as a way of getting Dean back on screen. Yes, ok, it’s somehow understandable that they have done it, but also ever since then, the show has always used the “easy way out” of prickly situations. In season 1 and 2 the boys always had a reasonably hard time to get a job done… it was the way the coped with the obstacles that made the plot realistic and enjoyable. They did it the hard way.

But then soon came the “easy explanations” and the show got bigger than life: Now you have an angel snap its fingers and voila! People are back on the show. Everything about SUPERNATURAL has become too easy, too common and therefore predictable equaling boring.  The boys always find a solution for everything and it all works out (even though they are spending a lot of time lamenting about having no choice, no plan and said father issues holding them back) . While this is very convenient for every storyteller, it’s also very annoying and the anti-thesis for great storytelling.  A good story isn’t about stuff working out, but about heroes, preferably broken ones to make matters more difficult. It now just seems logic that the story tellers of SUPERNATURAL have become lazy.

See, I think I know a thing or two about this subject matter. Call me sad, but I have made a list, and in about 25 years I have seen at least 270 TV shows/series that I know of and even remotely remember (not taking into account those that I have forgotten and not even starting to attempt listing every film I have ever seen. TV shows always work two ways: you have episodes that end in 45 minutes every week, or you have a show that drags on like Dynasty.  If you have ever seen the X-Files you might remember that feeling of despair you where left with at the end of each episode, when all the answers were taken away from Mulder and Scully. You kind knew, but really, you never knew. The same goes for LOST. You get a lot of bits and you can either work it out or give up.  I have seen lots of great shows being canceled because viewers simply couldn’t follow the plot. They expect easy feeding, not bits to chew on for days after. But why can’t these people not watch half hour Soaps and Telenovelas then and leave the good stuff to those who like the challenge of watching something a bit different? – This is were TV networks come in. They simply lack bravery I’m afraid. They count numbers, and don’t need intellectual satisfaction.

So which type is SUPERNATURAL? We have small plots that wrap every 45 minutes (like in the X-Files) but then we have these “underlying issues” people call the story arch that spans over the entire series. It’s woven into every episode, but it has become so repetitive as if viewers have to be reminded every week that the Apocalypse is nigh, that there is no way out and so on. It’s like the shows seems to thing that viewers forget, don’t pay attention, have become careless. But are they? Are SUPERNATURAL fans like that? – I think not. I have never met fans who got more involved in a show and creating a whole new world of Fandom out there. I have watched people go nuts over a TV show, cry, shout, rant and get silly. But lately, I have seen not much of it around. This website has said it before, there is a good chance that Fandom is dying out. People have already moved on to Twillight and other Vampire stories, which I cannot bring myself to watch as the themes are overused since Buffy and Angel. There is no need for more Vampire shows and two reasonably enjoyable ones have been cancelled off, while the ones hyped by teenagers are still going strong.

So BOSTON LEGAL was right in suing TV. Its made for kids – have you ever seen the Baby Channel? The BABY CHANNNNNNNEEEELLL??????? Where the hell is this all going? I am not sure I want to know anymore. Maybe I am finally too old for TV and we have to part like old friends:  Sorry TV, you have become so predictable to me now, so shallow, so superficial, so dumb. I don’t think we should be seeing each other anymore.

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Right. I can see it’s about time that I weighed in here with my comments on the finale episode of Supernatural. Everyone is entitled to their own views, and I am not saying that anybody is wrong in anything they have said. What I am saying is– Oh come on, people! Did you seriously think that there was any other way series five could finish? Do you even watch the show?

Hundreds of fan fiction writers have already seen this, and in fact have already written variations on a theme of Sam chucking himself into the pit. It was inevitable. If it had happened any other way it would have been lame, it would have been a cop-out, it would have been bloody obvious that it was just an excuse to bring them back for season six.

Why was it inevitable? Because of Sam. Sam is the stuff of legend: Sam is the literary figure, Sam is the doomed hero, Sam Winchester is Talyn (Farscape fans know exactly what I’m saying), the person who has spent all of his TV time fighting a losing battle against what he thinks everyone else wants for him. The thing is, he was never going to beat this, and he was never going to be anything else but destiny’s whipping boy. The only surprise that came with the series finale was the twist that Sam could not control his possessed Lucifer form – not until family came into it. And I’m not even talking about Dean, I’m talking about the Impala. It just surprises me that so many people seem to think there was any other way the finale could have happened. Consider the series three finale. The only way that could have ended was Dean going to Hell – if they had miraculously found a way to get him off his deal, or they have managed to somehow delay or resist the inevitable, I probably would never have watched the show again.

There were problems with the finale, I’m not saying there weren’t. Killing off two characters just to bring them back a moment later is a little bit excessive, even for the Kripke. And that moment where the two characters died: that was the moment you knew a reset button was coming over the hill. That was the moment that Kripke took a step over the line in a Russell T Davies kind away, to try and up the ooh-aah quotient of his last hour. I can’t blame him: it’s his show, it’s his baby, and he slaved over it and protected it for five years. The show has being threatened with cancellation so many times, but it’s still here.

Speaking of Russell T Davies, I am so relieved that the finale didn’t all go crappy all-out hands-down balls-to-the-wall loopy, just to try and somehow make it all sparkly and amazing. The way the episode was written made it very clear that this episode was always going to be the end. The tone of the narration, the archived footage used for the flashbacks, the tying up of a few loose ends (“and for the record, this time next Thursday, Bobby will be hunting a rugaru in Dayton”) – it all added up to The End.

So what do we make of The End? The very last moments of the episode I believe are what upset more people than anything else this series. We see Dean carrying out his promise to Sam – even though Dean never actually promised anything to Sam. But then again, Dean probably considered it the best way to go after all was said and done. Dean is never going to be happy with this new life, and I’ll be surprised if he stays longer than a weekend. There’ll be tears, I have no doubt, but Dean will have to say goodbye to Lisa and Ben and take his own five minutes out to accept what’s happened.

But Sam… Oh yes, Sam. What has happened to Sam?

This is where season six will really decide whether it’s any good at all, or it’s just a pile of pants that people are trying to hang on the washing line of bandwagons. Please please please, let the demons and angels be over.

What worries me is the fact that the streetlamp buzzed out behind Sam’s head as he watched Dean through the window of the house. The light didn’t explode all angel-like, it buzzed out, all demo- like. Either somebody else was standing behind Sam at the time the light went out (and please please please let that be Crowley!) or Sam himself causes the light to go out. This would make some kind of twisted sense, seeing as Sam was supposed to have chugged down three gallons of demon blood before he threw himself in the pit. However, wasn’t it Lucifer who said that Sam knew that his real family was ‘them’? Is Lucifer referring to the body of angels that have been haunting the Winchesters for the last generation or two? But that would be ridiculous – if Sam does turn out to be an angel after all this time I really will be the most disappointed in the show that I have ever been.

What would be interesting is a reverse Stanford manoeuvre – where Dean is either trying to make a life with Lisa and failing miserably or he’s leaving and moving on to try and find a life he can put up with somewhere else, and it is Sam who comes to him, to tell him that he needs to come back to hunting. It would make beautiful symmetry, as Chuck would appreciate.

Oh yes, Chuck. There’s been a lot of speculation as to who Chuck really was – I prefer to believe Chuck was actually a real man and a real prophet, as real as prophets are, anyway. I’d like to believe that he was only impersonated in the last episode – and then only at the end. Somebody was sitting back and having a monumental chuckle at The Boys and what they were getting up to – someone in a very tall-man-watching-ants-scurry-around kind of way. I like to think in the last scene that we see of Chuck, it was either God himself – although that would be the juiciest M. Night Shyamalan moment ever, wouldn’t it? – or one of the other archangels. Whoever it was, they cheated with something Chuck could not have had, giving the location of the face-off. And I believe whoever this person was, sitting at Chuck’s keyboard in a very clean shirt, enjoying his virgin hookers and whiteness, he also brought Sam back. Because Sam and Dean did alright in The Test, Job-style? Or because nothing ever really ends?

For me, the series did go kind of tits-up when we found out that an angel had brought Dean back in season four. That’s when it crossed the line between hunting urban myths and legends and trying to create its own. Some fans have been tired of the angel-demon arc in the later seasons, and I have to say I have been a little too. A few more run-of-the-mill monsters would have been nice – good old-fashioned salt and burns, which they don’t seem to have pulled in the last few series. I really hope, really really hope, that in season six we get back to some normal monster-stabbing rocksalt-burning silver-cutting box-standard monster hunts. I think we, as fans, deserve it, for sticking with the angels and demons plot line for the last two series.

I have enjoyed all five series, don’t get me wrong. But a few less demon plots, a few less angel playground fights, and a Hell of a lot more monster hunts – if you’ll pardon the expression – would have gone down much more easily.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print. More articles coming soon. We have a new Hellatus before us (with gratuitous re-runs on a millions different channels, not least of the CW), but I’m not taking it without a fight. We have #SPNrewatches via Twitter, we have spoilers to dodge, and we have DVD and BluRay releases in September – supposedly before season six reaches our screens. We can only hope that the new crew on board, this mix of old and new, don’t screw up this last series. Give us the last series to be proud of, people! Get us back to the season one and two fun of salting and burning, and leave the Russell T Davies plot lines to Doctor Who.

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HELP WANTED – APPLY WITHIN

Let me ask you this: Are you a writer? Are you a reporter? Do you like to inform your fellow demon hunters about the latest happenings in and around the Supernatural Fandom?

Well, here is your change: The Buckets are (seriously) hiring!

Okay, but here’s the catch: We can’t pay you anything-  squat, zilch, nada, 没什么, niente, nula, njet, zip, nichts, néant, zero, null.  Simply because we don’t earn anything with this thing here, BUT don’t be off-put by this. We are all in it for the fun, right?

Right?

A few weeks ago, we were contacted by such a person and oh I feel so guilty that I had never properly gotten back to her. My wonderful Supernatural Laptop got overrun by the Windows Demon, and I lost everything. My emails especially and I don’t know your name, so if you do read this: Please accept my sincere apologies and please do get back in touch with me and I hook you up as promised!

Contact Kiki

So to all prospect and aspiring writers: We can’t offer you fame and fortune but we offer you exposure. It’s an exercise for years to come and it will be tons more fun if we have you on board! Come on fresh meat! You know you wanna do it and we’d love you to! We neeeeed brrrrrraaaaainnnssssss

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We only had to be around for nearly two years to be asked to become someone’s affiliate and we’re loving it.  Here’s to the Supernatural Obsessives out there: Let us all  join forces!

So who are the Supernatural Obsessives again? Yes, we know it’s you, dear faithful readers, but there’s more to it than meets the eye in this case.

The Supernatural Obsessives started out at as a small group of fans on MySpace and have grown and moved into the next realm of social networking: Ning. It is a website that offers everything: Forums, Chat, Interest Groups, Personalized profile pages and much more.

This new and improved website plans to keep up to date information on Supernatural as well as the actors and crew of the show, available to its members through on site blog postings, which are also open to member postings.

Supernatural Obsessives

One of the features of the old site, that is carrying on to the new one, is the After Show Chat Discussions. These chats will begin a hour after the show airs in the east and central time zones of the US, 11pm Eastern, 10pm Central.

In an attempt to keep the site itself spoiler free, there is a group for the “Spoiler Whores”. This is where you can find any spoilers for upcoming episodes.

For those with a little naughty side, they have a group for  “The Gutter” minds. Here you can find members naughty confessions and thoughts about the characters and actors that portray them.

This site has so much to offer its hard to put it all into one small article. Go take a look at it for yourself at

newsupernaturalobsessives.ning.com

We are sure you will fall in love with the site and the people there. Take your time. You don’t have to join right away. Look around, check stuff out and make the choice for yourself.

Contact: @SPNobsessed31

________

WANT YOUR SITE FEATURED HERE?

No problem, email us a pictures or link and a Press Release and we will take care of the rest.

Also, if you want to link to our our site and need a banner, we’d love to hear from you.

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Oh yes – as fans, we’re really quite smart. Which is why it pains me to deduce that The Powers That Be – be they Warner Brothers or a channel in your own lovely country – really have no respect or in fact a single thought for the show’s fans.

Why am I led to this conclusion? Hmm, let me see.

First, for overseas fans of the British persuasion, there was the Great Season Four DVD Debacle of 2009. In short, season four in its complete boxed set went on sale in the UK shortly after it did in the USA. It proudly boasted of its gorgeous extras and shiny, shiny special features. Imagine the fans’ dismay when, instead of six discs in order, they in fact opened the case to find two disparate sets of discs, each labelled ‘1-3’, each one bereft of any special features whatsoever. It drove many fans to question if it were in fact the correct boxed set, or if Warner Brothers UK had simply emptied out all the unsold sets of volumes one and two and stuffed the two sets into one case. And they would have got away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling fans. They wrote, they called, they complained, they argued. Eventually Warner Brothers UK agreed to let the purchasers post their DVD sets to them, whereupon they would replace them with the proper anglicised version of the original USA region 1 boxed set – containing all the extras.

The lying region 2 UK DVD case.

This was done, this was settled, and life returned to normal. (And by the way, you can still get your boxed set changed here if you need to: Warner Home Entertainment, Freepost -RSAR-ZTSK-ZTBT, Rabans Lane, Aylesbury, HP19 8TS. England.)

Then the viewers in poor old Blighty were dealt another blow – the airing of (or non-existence thereof) season five. First, ITV2, who ran endless promos and adverts (commercials) for pretty much all of their other dead-beat shows, said they had the rights. Then they said they didn’t. Things looked bleak in Mudville as it transpired that there would be no airing of the fifth season of the show in the UK, be it on free or paid channels. War was about to ensue.

Then those lovely chaps at Virgin 1’s Living channel bought the rights to show the series and everything was fine again. Viewers were spared the awfulness and general crappiness of ITV2 in general, and still got their show. Bargain.

Over several ponds, it was Australia’s turn to get the finger from The Man. They waited and waited to get their favourite show on their screens, and Channel Ten did not disappoint. Until they did: they showed the first ten episodes of season five on Monday nights, and then they opted to drop it. If anyone can find a good reason for their motivation, seeing as the show’s ratings were actually increasing from season to season, I’m sure a prize would be in order. Those bloody ace Aussies are taking it upon themselves to make sure their disgust is heard both on the official site and in their own ways, but, for now, it seems there is no happy ending in sight. Again, if anyone can fathom why this was done by TV executives, I’m sure there would be a reward before plans to burn down said TV executives’ offices are finalised.

LATE EDIT: Aussies! Send your polite but firm letters showing why the show should be brought back to the channel’s snail mail address (Channel 10, GPO Box 10, Sydney NSW 2001) or in a similarly swearword-free but demonstrative way, jam up their goddamn message boards with good reasons why the show is sorely needed.

And doesn’t striking the programme from the schedule make you want to reluctantly go to the computer and get hold of the new episodes by other means? Why do channels and networks piss and moan about people downloading and stealing their programmes when it gets snatched away from viewers in the first place? If it were available to watch and DVR from home, how many people would bother to try downloading it? Not many, I’m willing to bet – on the grounds of poorer quality, wasted time and internet and bandwidth concerns. Then of course there’s the entire annoyance of paying for a channel (or, in the case of the UK, the criminally exorbitant license fee) and then having nothing to watch on said channel – and no way to cancel it lest you incur charges.

However, back in its own home of the USA, things appear to be going from strength to strength. On the one hand, episode eleven of the show gets aired 21st January 2010 and it looks like it’s going to be a real doozy. On the other hand, it’s also now in syndication, a boon for any purr wee tiny show. The hoopy froods over at TNT are going through season one as you read this, and are even planning marathons later in the schedule. Good times.

So it seems only viewers overseas miss out – for now. I live on a different continent to all the places mentioned above. This means that on the downside, seeing as they’re showing season four right now on TVB, there is no recourse but to obtain each week’s new episode by other means. (Ahem.) The upside? I don’t have to wait, and because I live in Hong Kong, I can stroll into my local HMV store and simply buy the region one USA copy off the shelf, no problem. Right now I have seasons one to four nestled quite happily on the top shelf of my DVD cabinet, and I know the complete season five boxed set will join it just as soon as it’s released (which, by the way, is the same as the US date).

So what say you, readers? This pulling of the show from other countries’ TV networks and channels, mixing up (some would say ‘deliberately’) merchandise until you’re caught out, being torn from your favourite show because it just is not on any channel where you live: should we take a snapshot and send it to Oxford with a note about adding it into next year’s dictionary under ‘taking the piss’?

You decide.

Pictures kindly supplied by @acquiesceh20.

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Once upon a time, there was a show called ‘Supernatural’. It was creepy, funny, angsty, dramatic, thrilling, and the best kept secret on the east coast of the USA. But soon after season one started airing, its fame and appeal spread all across the States. Soon it started to creep onto other continents, through such means as we won’t go into for legal reasons, and a cult hit was firmly established.

Although fans were made and fans were broken by various storylines, plot arcs or characters (not to mention choices of actors/actresses), by and large the show’s viewing numbers grew a little each season. Not only was the show unexpectedly picked up for a second season, but another, and another, and another – until season five began to air just a few months ago.

Fans were happy. Fans were pandered to. Some fans appreciated the open love-letteriness of some episodes, and some were shocked and appalled by the bald-faced liberties taken in others. But, by and large, the fans were fed.

But they also noticed that their favourite show was not getting the attention or promotion it deserved. Some fans banded together to rectify this atrocious disregard for a definite hit amongst all the dregs choking the broadband channels around the globe. Minion camps were born, postcard campaigns were waged.

And then people stumbled upon Twitter.

Actors and actresses of the show, real, bona fide people verified as owning their Twitter accounts (such as @mishacollins, @jumblejim – Jim Beaver, @groovegoddess – Traci Dinwiddie, and @ChadLindberg) also tweet their support for the show. The story of Twitter is pretty much already told.

However, the next chapter has not yet been written.

This is where Twitter users come in – namely, the readers of this litany.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use Twitter to send a message about the show, whatever that message may be, and include the tag #FindTheColt – all one the same day, at the same time around the world.

Confused? Let me help you.

Q: Does it matter if I use caps locks?

A. No. You could use #FINDTHECOLT, #findthecolt, #FindTheColt or pretty much any mixture of upper and lower case letters – thankfully, Twitter filters and bean-counters don’t care.

Q: Can I just type #FindTheColt with no message?

A: We would rather you didn’t. To prevent being mistaken for spam or robot accounts, it’s best to actually tweet something about the show to connect the phrase to. Including “Thursday, 9pm, The CW” would be a good way to keep it in the counted tweets.

Q: Can’t I just use #Supernatural or #SPN?

A: We’re still not sure if Twitter is letting those astoundingly Satan-worshipping tags (whoops, sorry, did you step in my sarcasm?) in again, after the whole P Diddy affair of September 2009. DiddyGate pretty much made it impossible for anything remotely supernatural or spiritual to become a trending tag (one of the top ten most widely used tags on Twitter at that moment). Thanks, P Diddy.

Q: I can’t keep typing “I love that show on the CW at 9pm on Thursdays” over and over again. How many times do I have to tweet?

A: Everyone only need tweet the hashtag #FindTheColt once. It’s not about how many times a single person does it (so no need to repeat it in a single message), it’s about how many individual users write it. If everyone who watches the show (according to Nielsen) does it once, we would have close to four and a half million tweets – enough to get us to the number one trending tag (TT) spot, surely. (Yes, it would, and don’t call me Shirley.)

Q: So what do I tweet?

A: Anything and everything to do with the show. Some people tweet their favourite Deanisms, or Samisms, or Winchesterisms (quotes from the show). Some people just mention they’ll be watching the show (without naming it, of course). Personally, I’ll be tweeting my top ten places The Boys would like to be looking for the Colt. I believe @WrathOfKripke will be tweeting his usual ditties including the hashtag du jour.

Q: Why use #FindTheColt anyway?

A: It was an excellent suggestion made by @SuperWiki, in that it does not mention anything censored by Twitter, it isn’t in any way spoilery, and it’s easy to do. And anyone who knows anything about TV will probably recognise it as the Winchester’s charmed Colt Paterson.

Q: When does this happen?

A: @SuperWiki is urging an organised approach – something which is sorely needed, judging by the lack of structure to previous weeks’ Twitter conquering attempts. Tweeting should commence on and close to:

Thursday 19th November, 2009 – 4pm (16:00) Eastern USA time.

For the rest of the world, that will be:

Ankara, Turkey: Thursday 23:00

Athens, Greece: Thursday 23:00

Auckland, New Zealand: Friday 10:00

Bangkok, Thailand: Friday 04:00

Beijing, PRC: Friday 05:00

Berlin, Germany Thursday, 22:00

Brasilia, Brazil: Thursday 19:00

Canberra, Australia: Friday 07:00

Hanoi, Vietnam: Friday 04:00

Hong Kong, S.A.R.: Friday 05:00

Lisbon, Portugal: Thursday 21:00

London, England: Thursday, 21:00

Madrid, Spain: Thursday 22:00

Los Angeles, USA: Thursday 13:00

Moscow, Russia / Russian Federation: Friday 00:00

New Delhi, India: Friday 02:30

Paris, France: Thursday 22:00

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Friday 00:00

Rome, Italy: Thursday 22:00

Seoul, South Korea: Friday 06:00

Shanghai, PRC: Friday 05:00

Tokyo, Japan: Friday 06:00

Toronto, Canada: Thursday 16:00

Vienna, Austria: Thursday 22:00

Zürich, Switzerland: Thursday 22:00

If I have missed anyone out, I apologise. I hope this post finds you close enough to a Twitter client or the internet to just send one message at roughly the allotted time.

We promise if you send one message each, Bill Gates will not get a single cent of anyone’s money from the proceeds.

Now isn’t that a good reason to send just one tweet containing #FindTheColt…?

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@WrathOfKripke (Not The Real Kripke) tweeted this just today:

Everyone tweet your top 10s!  RT @TozaBoma Thinking of top ten reasons why I’ll be attending #ChuckCon this Thursday at 9pm on the CW.

We think this is an ace idea. But what is #ChuckCon, I hear you ask?

Simply put, this Thursday’s episode of our beloved show involves our intrepid Winchesters hunting by way of a… convention. And not just any convention… A Chuck Shurley convention for all things Supernatural! No, not some daftly obscure TV show on some weeny network in the fourth largest country in the world, but the ‘so badly written it’s a cult hit‘ pulp fiction from the Supernatural series of novels by Carver Edlund – A.K.A. Mr Chuck Shurley.

While this does smack of taking metafiction to the extreme, it also makes us wonder how much fun could be had at Twitter’s expense. After all, they did screw us over by simply refusing to count any and all tweets that included the words ‘Lucifer’ or ‘Supernatural’ during the whole P Diddy debacle of September. Since then, and having learnt our lesson well, subsequent hashtags have included character names, episode titles or quotes, to slip by the watchful Big Brother presence of Twitter. So far, it’s worked – although it has been impossible to reach the Trending Topics board as the hashtags used are often disparate and disorganised.

Which is where Thursday comes in – and all Twitterers out there who like a giggle and their beloved show to get a bit of Trending Topic love.

On Thursday 12th November (that’s tomorrow for some timezones), simply tweet one reason you will / would like to / want to / need to see Thursday’s episode (5×09, if we’re counting) of the show Supernatural – referring to it as #ChuckCon, of course. My own personal favourite is:

No. 1 reason I’ll be attending #ChuckCon Thursday 9pm on the CW: Chuck Shurley is left-handed, same as Jason Manns, Steve Carlson and me. Go Southpaws!

Of course, the more bizarre and irreverent the message the better. Remember, it doesn’t matter how many times a single person tweets using the hashtag, it’s how many individual users actually use the hashtag. Retweets (recognised by the ‘RT’ within the message) also appear to count, as do any pictures uploaded to Twitpic and other picture plug-ins, using the hashtag in the caption.

So go for broke, people, if you are on Twitter and are so inclined. I know I’ll have ten good reasons on standby.

And I understand @WrathOfKripke will be posting his usual ditties containing the hashtag. I think it’s going to be fun!

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agony aunt sam banner - smallest

Hey there, Buckets. It’s me again, Sam Winchester. I’ve had a real truck-load of e-mails from you with your problems, and I have honestly read through them all. Well, when I say truck-load, I mean one. It was short. And nothing I could help with. Well, not in the way that person wanted. Sorry, I don’t go around stripping off my t-shirt just for fleeting pep-talks.

Just demonic skanks lookin’ to screw you over?

Shut up, Dean. I told you before – if you can’t keep quiet you can sit in the car. [Clears throat.] Anyway, since Dean threw my laptop on the floor a short time ago–

Dropped! Dropped it on the floor! And you were yankin’ at it too, OCD Boy!

Whatever! Be quiet!

[Silence. One second. Two. Five.]

So yeah, I haven’t had time to get a replacement yet. I’ve been reading my mails at coffee shops as my Treo’s also busted, but give us a few days and Dean will have boosted me a new one. So thanks to the Daily Buckets editors for again accepting this cassette tape of my responses. I’ll do my best to make sure next month’s is mailed in already done. Thanks, guys, you rock.

So where are we? Right. I got a very interesting e-mail just this morning. Actually, it was addressed to Dean, but I’m sure the writer meant Sam. So here we are: this week’s letter of distress:

Dear Dean,

This might sound weird but I think you and your brother may be the only people who can help me. My name is Nick and I’m fifteen.

Sorry, kid, can’t help you there. You’ll just have to grow up slow like the rest of us.

Dean, shut up. Let me finish reading.

C’mon, Sammy, this blows. When are we ditching this tape and going for pie?

When. I’ve. Finished.

[Silence.]

Anyways, on with the letter:

A few weeks ago, me and my older sister were at a movie. She’s kind of cool like that, she’ll take me with her even when her friends don’t like the movie we want to see and they give her crap over it. We like horror movies, so we watched this re-run at the local place. Anyway, before the movie she got talking to this guy while she was buying popcorn. He was about her age, I guessed, and he looked ok. We went in and watched the movie and really liked it – but she kept looking over her shoulder to see if this guy was there.

Oh God. Do we have to listen to Teenage Kicks All Through The Night as narrated by this kid?

Dean. The little dude’s got a problem, ok?

If he’s going to the movies with his sister then I agree with you.

Look, he wrote to you, ok? Not me, you. For some bizarre reason he thinks you’d be able to help him here. Shall I just bin it?

[Silence.]

Well… I s’pose I could… You know… just hear him out. Wouldn’t hurt.

Fine. So, they went to the movies, she liked the look of some guy… Ok, here we are:

So the movie finishes and as usual I hung about outside while she went to the washroom. She was ages so I got worried and went back inside. I saw her talking to this guy and she looked really happy. I just waited cos I didn’t want to spoil her fun. Then she realised I was there and got rid of the guy, coming over to me. She said he was pretty cool and she got his number. She drove us home and normally we talk about the movie, but this time was real quiet.

Are we getting to the good bit already?

Well if you stop interrupting me we’d be there already!

For the last two weeks she’s been really weird. She gets up late and moans about food, she only drinks the soda from the fridge and won’t touch water, and she goes out all night. The other morning I was getting up for school and I saw her car just stopping in the driveway. When I asked her where she’d been she said it was a secret and not to tell anyone. That’s not so hard – our parents are on these work assignment things and they’re not even in the States right now. My sister looks after us cos she’s eighteen already. Who am I going to tell other than my friends at school? Like I want them knowing I think my sister’s turned into a vampire.

Oh no. Dude! She ain’t a vampire, she’s rubbing ribs with the guy from the movies! Ohhh you poor shmoe! You write to him, Sammy, explain it all gentle-like.

Me? You want me to do it? Dude, he wrote to you.

Well yeah, but do you honestly want me to break it to him, Sammy? That he’s lost his best friend cos she’s found some guy at the local flea pit who lays pipe?

[Silence.]

I see what you mean. I’ll make up a reply for you, Dean.

Cool. Are we done?

We are.

So are we getting food now?

We are. And don’t forget, you owe me a laptop. I can’t keep sending tape to the Buckets, it’s rude.

Oh come on – wasting your baby was a team effort. It takes two to really smash a laptop like that.

True.

And anyway, the Buckets don’t care as long as you send ‘em something. Now let’s go – there’s pie out there and it’s calling my name.

Editor’s Note:

Sam Winchester’s advice column will be back next month. If you have a problem and would like him to read it, please mail it to ‘editor (at) thedailybucketsofcrazy dot com’, with ‘Please help me, Sam’ in the subject line. We will pass it to him top priority. It will also be password protected (i.e. Dean-safe).

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1. Dear Uncle Sam #1

The Supernatural RPG was published in August 2009 by Margret Weiss Productions Ltd, and we are not sure where they are physically located as the website doesn’t provide such a hint (or we missed an address, which should not happen on a good site)on second look we did find it hidden(!) and embarrassingly incomplete:

Mail can be sent here:
Margaret Weis Productions
P.O.Box 1131
Williams Bay, WI 53191

Phone us at:
(262) XXX-XXXX – Note: what kind of phone number is that?

In fact when we clicked around on said site we were greeted by sentences the web designer has left there, such as “content goes here”. Either you are very busy author Margaret, or you cannot bother to write something for yourself. Never a good sign.

On the other hand, a little research showed, that this Margaret looks like a jolly good character, considering that she is almost as old as our Mum, she looks really youthful! Impressive! But anyways. She hasn’t written the Supernatural RPG and only publishes it (as far as we understand this) so let’s focus back on that, shall we.

We asked around, the guys who buy and play it should be the ones that know best, right? So, what did we do? Don’t laugh, but we asked around on twitter and the ones that bothered to reply (we love you more than the others!) said the following, and we quote:

We asked the question “Have you had a chance to play the RPG yet? If so, is it any good?”

And hexenwulf replied:

hexenwulf @Crazy_Buckets Yep! I’m actually running a long term campaign. As a DM I’m very happy with the system and my players love it too.10:56 PM Oct 3rd from web in reply to Crazy_Buckets

hexenwulf @Crazy_Buckets That said the book is kinda meh. It really needs seasonal supplements-I’m considering writing some.

while zwdmon1 said:

zwdmon1 @crazy_buckets i heard a friend saying it wasnt as good as he thought. I personally was working on a d10 version of the game myself tho27 minutes ago from web

Searching for the keyword “supernatural rpg” on Twitter resulted in the following:

tahirisunrider This Supernatural RPG book even comes with a list of suggested background music! Nice! 5 days ago from txt

notmsn I love the Supernatural RPG. Captures the feel of the show really well. 6 days ago from Twitterrific

(click to enlarge)

plus some Spanish ones we didn’t want to attempt to translate.

So, kinda mixed reviews so far. What does the website actually say? Is says that it’s a Full Color Hardcover • 184 Pages • Available Now! and costs 39,99$ and no info if it is available outside the US. Who cares, right?

Actually, we do. In fact, we care so much, we even went to Margaret’s Website and send an email via the contact form. We hope it went through to anyone as we (amongst a lot of other folks) haven’t heard back from anyone.

The reason we emailed is this: Travis Wester, you may know him as our dear Ghostfacer sporting a fishermen’s vest covered in buttons, Harry Spengler. Who is, together with the rest of the Facers, attending the HellHounds convention in York, England this Halloween. As if this isn’t reason to celebrate, Travis has asked around if a few of the attendees are interested in playing an RPG…and can you guess where this is heading?

Yup, Travis was hoping to get to use the Supernatural RPG for this crazy weekend and has duly contacted Margaret Weiss Productions to ask if he may use it. And you know what? They haven’t responded to him, or us or any of you who have emailed them in response to Travis facebook message

This isn’t really a customer friendly way to deal with your potential customers, in fact this is all BUT good PR. We have no idea what the reasons behind this strategy are, if it’s to do with licensing issues or just wanting to be awkward, but at least a statement or any form of reply would do the trick. Everyone who works in PR knows that doing nothing is worse than doing the wrong thing. To not reply to your mails in over a month? Reckless.

We would like to suggest, that if you, Margaret, have no one to administer your site content, that you get in touch with us, we have a very handy Webmaster and Designer on stand-by who would clean up your act in a jiffy. We don’t mind lending her to you for a bit.

To all you fans out there, whether you are attending the HellHounds convention in a few weeks time or not, we’d still appreciate if you could show your support for Travis Wester and email Margaret and let us know if you get a reply. Someone has got to get through to her. Never give up, Facers and Non-Facers!

_____________

On a more positive note:

We found a free trial available at Drive Thru RGP, an odd website that provides The Hunt Begins, an introduction to the Supernatural Role Playing Game, based on the hit show on The CW. This quickstart package contains introductory rules, four pregenerated hunter characters, and Of Wolf & Man, a Supernatural scenario based on the legend of the Beast of Bray Road. Grab some players, some dice, and hit the highway. Silver bullets optional.

Maybe we give this a try.

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