Episode 177: Supernatural (with Meghan Fitzmartin)
/Supernatural is one of the longest running Monster of the Week shows on TV, and with that much content, we need an expert. Thankfully, Supernatural’s own Meghan Fitzmartin joins us to talk about the cosmology built over 15 seasons, what it’s like writing for television, and finishing something you love.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of hell/demons/damnation, threat of violence, famine, death (and resurrection), and child endangerment.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends Itaewon Class on Netflix! Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Multitude: Listen to Meddling Adults and Head Heart Gut by joining the MultiCrew. Our newest show, NEXT STOP, has just launched! Check out NEXT STOP in your podcast player or nextstopshow.com!
Guest
Meghan Fitzmartin is an award winning writer who has always been obsessed with genre. Currently in season two of her superhero audio drama, RED RHINO, she has worked on the series ‘SUPERNATURAL’ for the last three seasons, writing episode 14.16 “PEACE OF MIND”. In addition to TV and podcasting, Meghan writes for animation — most recently DC SUPER HERO GIRLS. Predominantly a genre storyteller, Meghan is devoted to writing emotional stories set in fantastical worlds that ultimately tell you how loved you are. You can follow her on Twitter at @megfitz89.
Sponsors
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Transcript
Amanda: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
Julia: And I'm Julia.
Amanda: And this is Episode 177, Supernatural with Meghan Fitzmartin.
Julia: Yeah, we originally planned on releasing this around the finally of Supernatural, but apparently the season's back end has kind of been postponed because of the world, so I think now is a good time to listen to it as any.
Amanda: Listen, with so much of it streaming, it is always a great time to learn about the cosmology of Supernatural, which is truly what we talk about here, as well as the process of actually making a television show, which is freaking awesome. I have no idea what that is like, and Meghan was so generous and fun, and clearly loves this world, so it was really, really lovely.
Julia: Yeah, and Meghan, as you will hear from the interview, is a writer for the later seasons of Supernatural.
Amanda: So, legit guys, we went straight to the source.
Julia: We did.
Amanda: We would also love to welcome straight to the source of our hearts, which is our Patreon supporters, Sarah, Ruby, James, Jesse, Andrea, and Talulah. Thank you so much for joining. You are among the ranks of such distinguished patrons as our supporting producer level patrons, Landon, Nikki, Tyree, Megan, Deborah, Molly, Skyla, Samantha, Sammy, Neil, Jessica, and Phil Fresh.
Julia: As well as our legend level patrons, Diane, Steven, Melena, Francis, Clara, Brittany, Josie, Kylie, Morgan, Beam Me Up Scotty, Audra, Chris, Mark, Mr. Folk, Sarah, and Jack Marie.
Amanda: Incredible. We are so glad that you are all with us. We say it every week because it is true every single week. We can only do this as our jobs because of the support of our listeners, whether that is sharing the show with somebody new to help grow our listenership, or supporting us on Patreon. As you consider supporting the businesses and artists that you really love, and helping to ensure that we can continue to do what we do, we really, really appreciate everybody who chooses to support us on Patreon.
Julia: Love you guys.
Amanda: Julia, can you remind us what we were drinking in the morning recording we had here? I think Meghan got up at 6 a.m. to talk to us.
Julia: Bless her. She's so good. We, of course, had some brunch cocktails. It wasn't the weekend, but brunch can be any day because time is fake. Personally, we love a beermosa, as we've talked about on the show. All you need is a light lager. You can use a shandy. You can use an IPA, if that's your jam. Then just top it with a little bit of orange juice.
Amanda: It's so good. I like a half and half beer to orange juice ratio if I'm feeling like I need to drink a bunch of them in a row, or you could just do a little splash. It's so-
Julia: I like a little floater.
Amanda: Configurable. It's so good. Julia, your taste in drinks is so good. Can you tell us what else would should be watching, reading, listening to?
Julia: Yeah. So, I'm still currently reading Ghosts of Eden Park, which was my last recommendation, but I started watching Itaewon Class on Netflix. It's another Korean drama. It's buck wild. You might remember my recommendation of Oh My Ghost a while back. Fantastic. But this is a revenge story where a guy's life is basically ruined by this big restaurant chain owner, so he makes it his life's work to surpass him. He does that by starting and opening up a pub in a really hip neighborhood in Seoul called Itaewon.
Amanda: That sounds incredible, and I would love to watch it while doing jigsaw puzzles, which is my little secondary recommendation this week. I picked it up when I had a concussion last year, and it is very good for when you want to do something but not really think.
Julia: Excellent choice.
Amanda: We are very excited to let you guys know that our scheduled live show at the Boston Museum of Science is now going to be a digital live show. We're going to be doing a virtual happy hour, still hosted by the Boston Museum of Science. We will be giving you the same live show we were going to, which is mythological doggos in history.
Julia: It's going to be a lot of fun. I've been really enjoying the research that I did for it, and it's going to be an absolute blast. Plus, we have a signature cocktail for that, so that's going to be fun, too.
Amanda: We do. Everybody who bought tickets to the live show has gotten, or will be getting very shortly, a refund. It's now free to attend. All you have to do is register for the Eventbrite, totally free, in advance. That's at SpiritsPodcast.com/Boston. The live show is happening on May sixth at 7:30 p.m. Eastern.
Julia: We also want to remind you that you can support Multitude and get some cool stuff by signing up for the MultiCrew. You can get weekly episodes of Head, Heart, Gut. This month, we are arguing what is the best ingredient in a BLT, which was a lot of fun, let me tell you.
Amanda: You did a great job on behalf of bacon, Julia.
Julia: Thank you. I was going between lettuce and bacon, and I think I made the right decision with bacon. Editor Eric, of course, took lettuce, because he's always the champion of the least likely to win.
Amanda: The dark horse. He loves a dark.
Julia: We also premiere stuff like our pilots for upcoming Multitude shows or stuff we're workshopping, such as Meddling Adults, which is hosted by Mike Schubert, where it is a competition to see who can solve the most children's riddles from stuff like Encyclopedia Brown. They don't-
Amanda: Shockingly hard.
Julia: It's very hard. I was in the pilot episode of that as well, against editor Eric, and it was a challenge.
Amanda: Yeah, so we dropped this to the MultiCrew feed. If you join the MultiCrew, for as little as $5 a month, you not only get a new weekly show from Multitude, but also you get first access and the chance to help shape and give feedback on new stuff Multitude is working on. We use the money from the MultiCrew to pay for our studio and to help make sure that we have this kind of infrastructure of time and space and being able to make new things for you and for each other. It is a really, really meaningful way to support all of Multitude, and to fund new work from, hopefully, people that you like ad shows that you really enjoy and want to see more of.
Julia: I also want to say, another one of the benefits of joining at the $10 tier is you get access to our finsta, where lately I have been providing how-to guides to make cocktails. It's a lot of fun.
Amanda: It is extremely exciting. All of the hosts have access, and everybody has been adding to it. We also do a newsletter every other week, so we tell you what we've been playing, and give you screenshots from Animal Crossing, and not posted on social media photos of our baking and cooking. It's really a pleasure to know that folks like our work enough to support it, and not just to support what we make, but new things that we are working on. That and everything else about all of the benefits you can get at the MultiCrew is at Multicrew.club.
Amanda: Without further ado, we hope you are well. We hope you enjoy Spirits Podcast Episode 177, Supernatural with Meghan Fitzmartin. We are so excited to have Meghan Fitzmartin on the show with us today. Meghan has written for Supernatural and is an all around Supernatural show guru, also the cohost of Wine and Comics, and the producer and writer for Red Rhino, which is a wonderful audio fiction show. Hey, Meghan.
Meghan: Hello.
Julia: If you like superheroes, Red Rhino is the show for you.
Meghan: Thanks. Hi, guys. Happy to be here.
Amanda: Good morning. Thank you for joining us, very early, from California.
Meghan: From the L.A. Yes, exactly. You guys get to hear my morning voice. Aren't you lucky?
Julia: I love a good morning voice. I find them much more sultry than my regular voice.
Meghan: Well, I was also going to say, if we're talking about Supernatural, nothing says Supernatural more than a deep, growly voice. It's on point.
Julia: Exactly. Everyone's got that vocal fry, but in the hot man way instead of the quote unquote annoying female way. Anyway.
Meghan: Exactly. Bringing it back. Making it ours.
Amanda: Meghan, as a person who's used Tumblr, I know a bit about Supernatural. I would love to hear from you sort of, if someone says, "What is that show you work on? What's it about?" How do you answer that? What is the sort of high level summary?
Meghan: Man. I mean, if it's my mom asking, I generally say, "A show that you don't want anything to do with. Thank you very much. We made God. Bye." Beyond that, ultimately it's a show about family. It's a show about these two brothers just kind of trying to live their lives after trauma, and making the world a better place. The thing that I love so much about genre television ... You can see this in Buffy. You see this in Angel. You see this in Lost, even. Genre television does a lot of really good heavy lifting in terms of paralleling the emotional stories with the actuality. For instance, comic books do the same thing where you're like, the world's going to end! That may be how the audience is feeling, but you know that that's not true. There's something cathartic about seeing in happen in real time for this story and how people kind of overcome it. Supernatural does the same thing, I think, with dealing with trauma, dealing with identity, dealing with loss, dealing with grief. The show does a really good job of sort of grounding those emotions in a way that, if you are like me and you don't know how to deal with your feelings, it explains it a little bit better.
Julia: Mood. Big mood.
Amanda: That's awesome, and that's a lot of what I definitely go to fantasy and science fiction for. The, maybe, lens is fantastical, but the things that people deal with are really cathartic and really relatable.
Meghan: Yeah, 100%. It just also helps that they're two attractive boys doing their thing.
Julia: That does help everything.
Amanda: So many moody filtered screen caps on my dash.
Meghan: It's so great. The single man tier is just its peak.
Amanda: It truly is so good. It's amazing to have a cast that's been together for so many seasons. This is season 15, 16?
Meghan: We're going into 15, yeah. 15 is our last season.
Julia: Wow.
Amanda: Wow.
Julia: That is so many seasons. That is so many years of putting people to work, and I appreciate that. Hollywood and the industry as a whole are hit or miss when it comes to whether or not you're going to have work the next season.
Meghan: It is the most consistent job in Hollywood, for sure. In that way, it was definitely a blessing. There's a lot of hard stuff to come out of that, but also some really good stuff. A lot of our crew has been on since the pilot or since the second episode, depending.
Amanda: Wow.
Julia: Wow.
Meghan: It's a really special-
Amanda: That's amazing.
Julia: That is wild.
Meghan: It's a special thing, for sure.
Amanda: So, talking about the sort of longevity of the show and building a world and a story over that length of time. Can you tell us a little bit about the cosmology of the world? What is the sort of structure? I know we deal with angels. We deal with demons. You mentioned the figure of God. Can you tell us a little bit about who we meet, and sort of Supernatural's take on what all of this means and how they relate to each other?
Meghan: Yeah. It's really interesting. I'm not saying this from a biased perspective. I understand it's going to come across that way. I think that Supernatural is probably one of the most well written shows for genre, and not just because, like I said, I'm biased towards it, but also because looking at the early episodes and how it built the world is just a master class. Whenever you're writing for television, you're always told to let go and look for other pilots to read, to study, because you, at some point, will have to write a pilot episode. Supernatural is one of those pilot episodes that I tell everyone to read, because it is just so tight. It's so perfect, and it also sets up the world really well. Not only do we get the victim of the week in the very first five minutes of the show, which is what the structure ends up becoming for the rest of the show. The victim of the week for the first five minutes are our main characters. We're now invested into this world. I understand it's just the wacky and weird that's happening here.
Meghan: That first season is a lot about the lore stuff. It's a lot about stuff that you'd tell around a campfire. Then you start to kind of pull back, and you start to realize demons exist here. Demons are the really big surprise of the first season. Then, second season is when Supernatural jumped over. It wasn't the WB. It became CW. You can start to see some network nets, which are really interesting for me. Then you start to kind of build the world out a little bit more. What does it mean that there are demons? That probably means that there's a hell. You pull back a little bit more and you see that there's a trickster God. You see that there's all sorts of things.
Meghan: Then, the big reveal for season four, it kind of revitalized our entire show by introducing angels. It was kind of a slow burn, in terms of just building the world and building the mythology. We talked about God, but we said that God was not present. We didn't fully introduce who God was until season 11. We talked about him starting in season four. Even a little bit before that, but mostly in season four. Just the incredible slow burn of world building. I'm a person that I want to tell everybody everything right off the top of my head, so it's been ...
Julia: I have so many notes. Let me share them with you.
Meghan: I know. Exactly.
Julia: I have 100,000 words.
Meghan: I've thought about everything. Let me prove to you that I have thought about everything for this world.
Amanda: Listen, this is how money works, and it's really important that I tell you every single kind of coin and what the nut to coin ratio is.
Julia: Oh, boy.
Meghan: I've created a whole language, and I would like to sing a whole song about it that will last a chapter and a half, Tolkien.
Julia: Yes, correct.
Meghan: Listen, props to you. I will not be reading that song.
Julia: We recently did an interview with author Garth Nix.
Meghan: Yeah, yeah. I saw.
Julia: One of my favorite parts of that interview is we were asking him, and he was commenting on the [inaudible] We were like, "Well, would you ever want to write a book like that for one of your books?" He's like, "No. I'd rather just write a book." I was like, "Oh, damn. Okay."
Meghan: I'd rather not put all that work into it. Super valid. It's an interesting lesson in prioritizing. What was prioritized is the relationship of the boys, maybe a little bit more than the world itself. What's really important is Sam and Dean and how they react to each other, how they relate to each other. The world beyond that is only important as it relates to those boys, which is really cool just from a writing perspective. That's right. That's how you should do things.
Julia: Yeah, focusing on the micro and having the macro kind of exist in the background.
Meghan: Right, exactly, and having it be informed by your characters.
Julia: I love that.
Meghan: Making sure that the choices that you're making are always character choices, rather than this is a cool world that I think is really cool for world reasons. It may be a really cool world, but I know that I'm probably not going to care about it until it is directly connected to somebody that I have begun to care about.
Amanda: Totally.
Julia: I think it's really cool, too, kind of harkening back to what you were saying about the pilot and having the victim of the week, the monster of the week, kind of thing, the first ones being the brothers. It just fits Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey so well, because you have to introduce those reluctant characters into the journey. If you're just kind of joining them in media res, you're not as invested. I love that as an idea.
Meghan: I'm telling you, it's one of the best pilots, hands down, from a pure structure perspective.
Amanda: When you guys were thinking about sort of emotional growth, versus plot, versus world building, and continuing to kind of raise the stakes and expand the lens of the world, how do you approach writing individual episodes versus the whole season?
Meghan: Well, our room is a little bit different than most rooms. We're not in it as much. We're with each other all day, all the live long day around each other. It's interesting because, to me, so much of it is about learning through osmosis and kind of adjusting the story as it relates. Oh, I have this really cool idea. Then you start to think about it and you start to kind of talk through it with everybody. Then you start to say, okay, where do we want them to go? We look at it almost in parts. That's always how I've been kind of taught to do television is that we look at the season, not to have the end goal be where you're going. This season's a little bit different because this is the last season, so we have to kind of figure out how we're going to end it. For most seasons, we don't really know what that end's going to look like yet. Definitely not when we start.
Meghan: The cool part of television or collaborative storytelling is leaning into the strengths of the people around you, not just your other writers, but also your actors, and also the crew, and also post. What's the cool thing that everyone can bring to the table? Sometimes that story changes depending on, oh, I really like this actor. In season 12, we introduced Lucifer's child. Somebody got pregnant with Lucifer's baby, because sure.
Amanda: Classic.
Meghan: As you do. To her credit, didn't know that it was Lucifer, so whatever. Also, apparently-
Julia: You usually don't.
Meghan: Also, apparently the first time Lucifer had sex, but we're unclear. Anyway ...
Julia: Okay. You would think that Lucifer would be getting it down more.
Meghan: Apparently not. He was quite surprised by it. She's an amazing actress, Courteney Cox. She's on Legends of Tomorrow now. She gave birth to basically Lucifer's son, who was about a 20 year old man. The actor's name is Alex, and we love him. We weren't sure. We weren't sure if we were going to love him. We weren't really sure what he was going to bring to the character. The more that we saw him on screen in the dailies and things like that, we were like, oh great, we can write towards this because he's phenomenal.
Amanda: He's awesome.
Meghan: It's also the same thing that happened with Misha Collins. Misha Collins came on season four, and wasn't planning to be. He was the introduction to angels and to our world. That was kind of it. He was just flawless at it. It truly felt like he belonged on the show, same like Alexander Calvert. You lean into that, too, with storytelling. That's, I think, another part of what we do in our stories. We lean into it. We see what works, what doesn't, but then we also know these characters super well. Where do they need to go? What emotional things do we owe? Also, how can we tell a cool story? Any combination of those things ends up making the show.
Julia: I'm very curious about the demonology and the hierarchy of angels and stuff in the show. Demons and angels, there's a lot of cannon about them in Christianity, but then you guys introduce stuff like trickster gods and stuff like that. I'm curious as to where you draw the line versus sticking with the cannon versus creating something new entirely. I'm just curious about that process, because that always fascinates me.
Meghan: I think something that we enjoy doing on the show is looking at the cannon and saying, how can we bring something new to it, or how can we surprise an audience? Whenever I first got on the show, I liked the show already, so I had watched all the episodes. Whenever I got on the show, I was like, I want to keep learning. I'm going to read all of our episodes. Which, we're over 300 now. It was a feat. It was a long process.
Julia: That's so many episodes.
Meghan: So many scripts. One of the things that I was really impressed by is that the thing that Supernatural did really well at the very beginning, and kind of spoke to what the rest of the show would look like, is that it utilized audience expectation, and therefore could subvert it. The example that I always kind of give is, if you see a woman running in the woods, a woman in a white nightgown running in the woods, that's one page worth of writing, but you've already told a story. You've already set up expectations for the audience. That's so much work that was done with just writing one page of the story. Then what you do, knowing full well that your audience is going to expect that girl to be the victim of the week, you turn it around and make her the werewolf. It's building off of the expectations. It's knowing the myths. It's knowing the religion. It's knowing the backstory and saying, how can we subvert this narrative?
Meghan: It leads really well into why Supernatural, I think, is a very funny show, and also a very meta show, because it's always been meta. You look at some of the early episodes, and you see how it's always kind of been very aware of itself, which is what a meta show needs to do. It's always been able to say, oh okay, this is that. We're going to change the format on its head, and therefore we are going to be a meta show. You just can't not. It's the same thing with vampires. Vampires on our show are very different than vampires of lore. Especially if you're telling a story, and you're telling a story to an audience that, for the most part, is fairly horror suave. They're savvy. They know what you're talking about. How do you spin it on their head? That's the precipice.
Meghan: So, same thing with angels. One of the jokes is that angels are dicks, which is the opposite of what you would think of an angel. So, just kind of taking the expectations and just turning them on its head is just something that I think that we do for a lot of our mythology. Oh, okay, this is what you're expecting, which is good. That's what you should be expecting. That's kind of what the narratives thus far have taken you. How can we subvert that?
Julia: Is there a piece of the lore from the show that is your favorite piece of the lore?
Meghan: I don't know. I love the way that we do lore. I love the way that it asks questions. I think that the difference about our lore ... Lore in general is supposed to answer questions that are strange for people. Why did my crops die? Oh, well I probably upset some God. That's the only reason the crops died, not because there was no rain, or whatever reason. Lore was always built to answer a question. I think what I love about our lore, it actually exists more in the gray area. Our lore exists to ask questions. Our lore exists to say, okay. We have a werewolf character, Garth, who's great. He's played by DJ Qualls. What if one of our characters that we love and know become a monster? Well, what do you do then? Do you kill them still, or do you try and exist within that? It's the same thing with God. It's the same thing with angels. They are supposed to be the good guys. What if they're the bad guys, but also demons are bad guys? We ask the question a lot about free will. I think that that's something that I love so much about our show and in terms of the lore. The lore almost always exists to ask questions rather than to answer them.
Julia: I really like that. Thank you. That's a great answer.
Amanda: I imagine that that opens up so many possibilities for you all writing wise as well, because there's so much pressure, as I know, myself, from trying to write novels for NaNoWriMo. There's so much pressure to answer every possible question that at least I felt as a writer, and to make something that is so air tight that no matter what question someone asked about it, there would be a really logical answer. Approaching it from how can we open the world, pose a question, raise some stakes, make you look at what you know differently, that's just intriguing and exciting.
Meghan: Absolutely. This is what's interesting to me. I actually deeply love stakes. I need every story to have stakes, as I think most people do. I also love false jeopardy. I think false jeopardy is so interesting, especially for a writer. Especially-
Amanda: What is that?
Meghan: The false jeopardy exists, primarily, for our show, where you don't die. What's the worst thing that can happen, because you're never going to die. Our boys have died so many times. What's the point?
Amanda: My boys.
Meghan: My boys.
Amanda: They just die all the time.
Meghan: My sweet, sweet boys are just always dead at some point. Some way, someone always dies. How do you, when your characters have died so many times? Superhero narratives also have the same issue. This is maybe a side tangent, but I read an article by one of my favorite comic book writers. His name was Mark Waid. He was writing Flash at the time, and he was talking about how do you add in jeopardy. I think it wasn't even a Wally West book. It was Barry Allen's book, but Wally West was there. Whatever, whatever. He had inserted the false jeopardy of Wally West has twin children and they were going to die. The premise was that Wally had to save his twins before they die, essentially.
Meghan: You, as the reader, know that they're not going to die. It's not their book. If this were their book, then maybe it will be sad. Also, who dies in a comic book story? Even if you die, you're going to come back. How do you add any sort of jeopardy to it? The thing that Mark Waid said was, ultimately he got to the point where there's a moment at the end of the story where he saves the day. Woo, everything's fine. He's off in the corner during the party, and his wife Linda comes over to him. She says, "Well, why? You should be celebrating. Why are you upset?" Wally goes, "Because I chose. In that moment, I chose which of my children I would save, and now I have to live with that." That's what's so cool about it. That, to me, is the beauty of false jeopardy is saying, okay, you're right.
Meghan: Those stakes, the killing stakes, are not interesting because we've done that so much on stories. We've made it a joke. Do you know what I mean? Whereas, what's interesting, then, is how are you emotionally affected by this? I think that that, for our show, is something that I love so deeply. It's not actually about who dies. It's who lives and how you're affected by it. What is the emotion? How are you emotionally growing and emotionally affected by these stakes that don't seem to be stakes, but are in fact damaging something else, I think.
Julia: Yeah. I think one of the hardest things, as a writer, is understanding that there are fates worse than death, and finding out what that is for the character that you're writing is really, really important. I always think of, as a great example of that, Griffin McElroy in the Suffering Game arc of The Adventure Zone, just being able to pick out exactly what emotionally tolling things he could do to really impact those characters and make them decide.
Meghan: Exactly. Affected both them and me, specifically? That's my favorite arc of The Adventure Zone, and it's so much so that I have two rings that signify from that space that are two spins. I love that, and it's exactly the reason you're talking about.
Julia: Love that. God, that's so cool.
Amanda: I know. I think I never succeeded as a fiction writer because I just don't want to make anyone suffer. It's just extremely challenging for me.
Julia: Yeah, that's a problem. Amanda can only write hopepunk.
Meghan: It's really hard. It's a thing that I've been trying to push myself more and more, because you're right. I look at the way that some people treat their characters and I'm like, "Why would you do that?" But you have to. You got to.
Julia: They'll be fine. They're fake.
Amanda: Got to raise those stakes.
Meghan: Yeah, that's right.
Amanda: Give them a chance to grow and stuff.
Meghan: Exactly. Exactly.
Amanda: We are sponsored this week by Stitch Fix. I know that I would really love it if every clothing store had a bunch of options in a bunch of different sizes, and knew the colors that I liked and look good in, and also let me try things on in the comfort of my own home, and then send back whatever didn't work. Stitch Fix is focused on making all of that happen. Fashion changes, but true style doesn't. You can help build timeless looks that work again and again by working with a Stitch Fix styling expert who learns your tastes, what you like, what you're looking for, the kinds of clothes that you already own, to make sure that whatever you get goes well with what you have. They also have consistent sizing. They negotiate that whole business of a medium at this one store is not a medium at another store. You give them your sizes, and they send items that they know will work for you.
Julia: Amanda, what have you been loving lately from your Stitch Fix collection?
Amanda: I've just rotated out some of my spring and summer clothes, and I have a green dress from Stitch Fix last year that I got for a convention. I really love it, because it's extremely comfortable, but also looks a little bit fancy. I can really just appear to be way more together in my video chats than I actually am.
Julia: I've seen it. It's very cute.
Amanda: Thank you. Everybody, you can try Stitch Fix for yourself at StitchFix.com/Spirits to get 25% off when you keep everything in your Fix. If you keep anything at all from your fix, the $20 styling fee is applied toward whatever you keep. Shipping and exchanges are always free. They're also very easy. If you end up keeping everything in your box, you'll get 25% off by going to StitchFix.com/Spirits to sign up.
Julia: Yeah, and the best part is there's no subscription required. You can schedule them for any time. Again, that's StitchFix.com/Spirits for 25% off when you keep everything in your Fix.
Julia: Amanda, things have been depressing lately. It's been a little bit rough out there.
Amanda: It has been.
Julia: I am looking for content that is not going to make me feel even more isolated than I already do, and that is why I am really, really grateful for Our Plague Year. This is a new kind of current events podcast from Joseph Fink of the Welcome to Night Vale fame and Alice Isn't Dead. It is an island in a sea of bad headlines. It's sort of this experiment in public anxiety. It's been a scary year, but I realize now that I don't have to be scared alone.
Amanda: It's really powerful. You acknowledge your anxieties. You acknowledge that fact that it's extremely uncertain, but doing it with others. There's just something really powerful about it.
Julia: Joseph and other prominent writers like Cory Doctorow, Niecey Shaw, Night Vale's Jeffrey Cranor, they document this year at it is lived week by week, the big and the small, the tragic and the funny. Alongside that, they also feature regular voicemails from listeners who are describing their own extraordinary and also kind of ordinary moments. Their plan is together they can tell the story of this really buck wild year and live through it.
Amanda: Absolutely. If you like The Empty Bowl and the listener voicemails that come in that, or if you like The Hilarious World of Depression where listener letters make up a big part of the show. I really love hearing from other people, and knowing that I can count on a space that doesn't try to cover up what's happening, but also isn't dwelling in anxiety. You can find Our Plague Year anywhere that you get your podcasts.
Julia: Or go to NightValePresents.com/OurPlagueYear.
Amanda: And now, let's get back to the show. Just given that the timing of when we're talking to you, do you want to speak a little bit about endings and what makes a satisfying one? Kind of what's on all of your minds as you approached kind of story boarding and then executing the season?
Meghan: Well, we're a 20 episode show, so our ending is so far away. Everyone's asked me. It's October when we're recording this, and everyone's been asking me, in my friend group and what not, "Are you sad? Are you sad the show's over?" I was like, "When is it ending now? What are you talking about? We're not anywhere close to ending. There's a lot of work to do."
Julia: We're on episode like three right now.
Meghan: Exactly. We've got so many more episodes. I'll be sad in January, I think. When I-
Julia: That's fair.
Meghan: Do you know what I mean? I think that our last shoot is going to be in April or something like that. As that gets closer, I think that I will feel a type of way. In terms of endings, it's funny you brought up The Adventure Zone, because I just listened to that for the first time last year. That ending is so well done. I had been thinking a lot about endings and what makes a good ending. I hate ending stories. My friends make fun of me because I haven't seen the last episode of most shows that I love.
Amanda: I just watched the end of Parks and Recreation. It took me a good few years.
Meghan: Okay, good. I feel better about that, then. That makes me feel good. I haven't watched the end of Battlestar. I haven't watched the end of the third season of Veronica Mars. I have watched season four, but I won't watch the end of Veronica Mars.
Amanda: It's different.
Meghan: It's hard. One of my favorite shows was The Justice League animated show. I think it took me four years.
Julia: So good.
Meghan: It was so good. I think it took me four years to watch that last episode, because we were going to record over the VHS tape. I was terrified I was never going to get to see it, because this was before streaming. In terms of endings, it's figuring out how do you emotionally resonate. Also, being okay, I think, with the fact that no one's going to be okay with the end.
Amanda: But, Meghan, I want everyone to like me so much all the time.
Meghan: So much. Oh, man. Can I just tell you that working on Supernatural has really killed that in me. The internet has some strong opinions about me one way or another, which is fine.
Julia: The internet always has strong opinions about everything. That's the problem.
Meghan: Truly. Truly.
Amanda: And something someone loves so much. Ultimately, it is a testament to your work that somebody cares enough about it to feel really invested, but the emotional experience of someone saying that all your work is wrong and also specifically bad is real.
Meghan: Honestly, I don't know. I've come around on it, because I'm like, this is really beautiful, the amount of passion that it inspires. The thing that actually is more terrifying is when somebody is apathetic towards my show. Then I'm like, oh, you hate it. If you hate me, that's fine. There's so much that's sweet about our show. I think it's the nature of shows nowadays because of social media. You are in this with the people that have watched you and been supportive of you for so long. Trying to figure out a way to not be Game of Thrones is definitely on everyone's mind.
Meghan: At the end of the day, what it has to come down to is what's best for these characters. Going back to the first episode, I recently rewatched the first season, because I wanted to kind of see what we had promised all the way back in season one. Whether or not that was the intention, you make promises as a storyteller at the very beginning of your show. It's important to see either how are you going to fulfill those promises, or make those promises different, subvert the promises. I feel like How I Met Your Mother is a show that tried to hold onto those promises a little too tightly. How do you grow with the show? How do you accept that the show has grown? It's a lot.
Meghan: I really love our ending. Every time I've heard it, I've cried.
Amanda: Good sign.
Meghan: Hopeful. I also just care deeply about these people. I'm excited about it. I'm excited, not that it's ending, because I hate anything ending ever, but I'm super honored to be a part of a thing that has mattered to me a lot, to be able to be in the room and just watch as people very respectfully try and figure out the best way to lay these characters to rest, to utilize the [inaudible] extent of it all.
Amanda: Was there anything else that you wanted to touch on?
Meghan: So, I have a religion degree, because I was going to be a youth pastor, which is a fun party conversation topic that I bring out whenever I feel uncomfortable.
Amanda: So did our editor, Eric.
Meghan: Oh, no way.
Amanda: Now you both work on mythological-
Julia: Podcasting.
Amanda: Shows, which I think is very apt.
Meghan: I think so too. That's a thing that I always actually really appreciated about Supernatural. Even before I worked on this show, I loved the way that it's hopeful, and I love the way that it took religion. It takes the heart behind religion. It may not be, because we don't necessarily do a lot. A couple of times we've done gods and goddesses. There's one particular episode in season five. We did a whole bunch of gods. That's pretty good, but we don't delve into it a lot of time, which is fine. It's what works for the show and what doesn't. I love kind of the heart behind all of the times of using religion. It was so interesting to me to be a kid that was in the south, growing up very religious, and seeing this show. Their takes on religion has always been really interesting, so to be able to kind of add in my own two cents has been fun.
Meghan: We don't really have them anymore, what you guys talk about in terms of the past lores and past spiritualities and things like that. This particular time that we exist in, we've already kind of accepted one thing or another. We've already accepted the religion. We've already accepted whatever, and we don't have new version of it. I think our quote unquote new versions are television, and to see the kind of mythos that's created within that has been really interesting and fun in how it takes things that I grew up with within religion and explains it even better to me.
Amanda: I love that. That's such a cool opportunity to be able to be a part of the ongoing mythos. From a fan perspective, too, I like the things that a show, or a book, or a text gestures at but doesn't necessarily explain. Having one episode where a bunch of gods or goddesses are introduced, that's a whole tag on AO3. You know what I mean? That's a whole kind of corner of the world that people can build out and explore for themselves, which is awesome.
Meghan: Yeah, 100%. Letting people kind of exist and live with their own spaces, which is also, I think, part of world building, like you were talking about before. Being able to say, yeah, that's part of this world. This world does exist within that, but we can't focus on that right now. That's for you and AO3 or you and other spaces to kind of play around with. That's really cool and magical.
Amanda: Hashtag marauder's era, am I right?
Meghan: Ah, yes. Truly.
Amanda: Well, Meghan, thank you so much for coming on bright and early before your work day starts to speak with us about Supernatural, and writing, and endings, and all of the amazing things that we touched on.
Meghan: Absolutely.
Amanda: Please let our audience know where they can reach you, and where they can, I don't know, delve more into Supernatural.
Meghan: Oh, man. Well, Supernatural is all on Netflix for who knows how much longer, because the streaming wars are nigh upon us.
Amanda: Oh, boy.
Meghan: Yeah, not looking forward to that. It's all on Netflix, and also on DVD. We're one of the few shows that still continues to put out DVDs, mostly because there's so many of them, and people started a collection like 14 years ago that they don't want to stop. We're around. I am on Twitter @MegFitz89. I'm Instagram as that. I'm on pretty much every form of social media as MegFitz89. Then Wine and Comics is on Twitter @WineAndComics. Red Rhino is RedRhinoPod. Check me out. Check everything out. Come hang out. I talk a lot about Supernatural and a lot about stories, and cry a lot, basically. That's just all I do.
Julia: That's the internet for you.
Amanda: You're so good and also relatable on Twitter, which I really appreciate.
Meghan: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Amanda: Well Meghan thanks so much. And listeners whether you’re in heaven, hell or somewhere in between remember.
Julia: Stay creepy.
Amanda: Stay cool.