help, I've tripped into a fandom and I can't get up

[aria]

...I seem to be watching this show as it airs now, which means I am probably letting myself in for a lot of grief. I'm also incapable of thinking of it as a show that actually happens to people, but since it is, the polite thing to do is spoiler-cut, I believe. I feel a bit weird having specific episode comments when I don't have that many ~feelings, but back in seasons four and five I was still pretending that I didn't, and therefore made no excited rambling posts. ANYWAY.


SAM WINCHESTER, CUT YOUR HAIR.

DEAN WINCHESTER, CURB YOUR BUDDING ALCOHOLISM.

I am pleased to see that Sam continues to be the more emotionally stable one despite having way more psychotically weird stuff happen to him! My love for Sam has crept up on me, so I still feel a bit startled every time I want to draw sparkly hearts around him, but basically the moment he stopped having sadfaces about ~not being normal~, he became GREAT. Now he has Lucifer hallucinations and is still keeping it together better than Dean because -- well, Sam may have a lot of problems, but viciously hating himself isn't one of them.

Meanwhile, man, all my Dean feelings are still weird and tangled and inarticulate. Someday I will talk about Dean coherently! But today is not that day, so instead I will just observe that this episode did weird things to my stubborn headcanon. My stubborn headcanon comes from that glorious place early in season four where Sam tries to get Dean to talk about Hell, and Dean just stares at him bleakly and says, "There aren't words," because it meant we got to fill in the horrors ourselves! And my, um, favorite Hell as presented in fiction is from Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, in a story called "Other People," where, basically, Hell is yourself. There's physical torture first, but then comes the bit where you have to go back over everything you've ever done wrong or regretted in life, moment by agonizing moment, for eternity. And this notion fits very well into the world of Supernatural! And maybe it's just me, but that sounds so much worse than being tortured for a bit by Alastair and then doing some torturing for him, though far be it from me to deprive the world of Christopher Heyerdahl, and I guess the symmetry of the seal-openings wouldn't have worked either. Whatever. My point is, this new episode, and how far they didn't take the concept of the self as its own worst punishment, means that I wish for that headcanon to be proper canon even more now. Alas.

Also, sometimes Supernatural's flashback montages of moving emotion work for me. Like Sam's flashbacks to him and Dean and the Impala before he overcame Lucifer? That one worked for me but good, like, I watched it three or four times in a row and chewed on my knuckles in joy. Aaand then sometimes the montages don't work, like in this episode, which could have been called Dean Has Manpain About Fridged Ladies. I am so happy there was more Jo! But fuck do I wish any of it was actually about Jo, and not about Dean Winchester's sad pretty face. I love his pretty face, but the only emotion you are invoking here is RAGE.

Eh, I knew what I signed up for. Anyway at the end they had a heart-to-heart over the Impala and drove off into the sunset, and it's kind of nice to not have exhausting arc plot for a while.

Comments

[gehayi]

Next week is for the Buffy fans, and it sounds like comic relief. This is the summary:

A jealous witch (Charisma Carpenter) devastates a small town when she finds out that her husband (James Marsters) is cheating on her.

And the title? "Shut UP, Dr. Phil."

[aria]

Yeeeah, I saw that next week is going to be the Cordelia and Spike show. So far they've been about 30/60 for whether they let female alums of Whedon shows live (that is, Amy Acker got to live, but both Amber Benson and Jewel Staite have been killed, by Cas and Dean respectively, yaaay /o\) so I do not actually have high hopes.

Somehow I get even more ragey about dead women if they're from Whedon shows? Probably because I'm going "No, no, see, they're here to subvert your horror tropes, what the hell is wrong with you?"

[innocentsmith]

Having been way into Egyptian mythology as a kid, my main reaction was, "Wait, why is Osiris evil? And where are Anubis and Maat and Thoth? And they don't randomly judge living people, they wait till after you're dead. And then the punishment isn't being killed, it's having your soul devoured by a crocodile-lion-hippo goddess! They're not even ripping Dean's heart out and weighing it against a feather! BORING."

Also, "...Did someone on the writing staff watch Sesame Street: Don't Eat the Pictures and decide it would make a good basis for a clipshow?"

But yes, it was both nice to see Jo again and annoying that it so clearly wasn't about her, but about Dean's not-very-convincingly-portrayed manpain. IDK, I think maybe I'm just especially hostile towards episodes in any show that pretend to be about calling characters to account for the horrible crap they've pulled over several seasons, but really the deck is stacked in their favor from the beginning and we know that in the end they'll both get away and be reassured that ~*~they did what they had to do.~*~ Maybe they did or maybe they didn't, writers, but did anyone make you write them in those dilemmas?

Also, again, the black guy dies. Of course.

...The landscape behind Sam and Dean in that final scene was very pretty, though. I'm sure it will make nice icons.

[aria]

Supernatural: doing horrifying things to all religions but especially the non-Judeo-Christian ones since, well, ever, but particularly egregiously once or twice. Osiris is evil because he's a pagan god or something, duh! sadffdj >:/

Of course now I'm trying to think of a way for them to have actually done an episode in which Dean's called to account for the horrible crap he's pulled. And I'm not quite sure what I'd do, but for a start I'd call him on the things he's actually accountable for rather than the things he feels irrationally guilty about; there isn't much emotional satisfaction to be had from calling Dean on his crimes when Jo made her own goddamn choice and Sam appears to be pretty much over his anger at Dean. What I'd do instead, though, I'm not sure.

Hah! I totally noticed how pretty and cappable that final landscape was too. XD

[innocentsmith]

I think it annoys me especially because they got stuff wrong in a way that makes things less interesting than the actual mythology. By a lot. I mean, if you're going to butcher other people's religions, at least try to make it exciting. This was just sort of boring and predictable.

...Of course, they probably didn't have the money to do the effects for Ammut, Devourer of Souls. It was pretty clearly a budget-saving episode, what with the reused footage and lots of interior shots. But even the dialogue was just kind of...flat.

Now that I've remembered the whole sad-little-Egyptian-orphan-boy-is-unfairly-judged-by-Osiris plot of "Don't Eat the Pictures," I am convinced that this is, in fact, the source. I mean, "The Monster at the End of the Book" is a Grover picture book: clearly someone on staff is a Sesame Street fan. Sam basically was playing Big Bird's part. ...This goes some way in making me like the episode, actually, because what's not to love about Big Bird!Sam?

for a start I'd call him on the things he's actually accountable for rather than the things he feels irrationally guilty about

Yeah, pretty much this.

[gehayi]

Of course now I'm trying to think of a way for them to have actually done an episode in which Dean's called to account for the horrible crap he's pulled. And I'm not quite sure what I'd do, but for a start I'd call him on the things he's actually accountable for rather than the things he feels irrationally guilty about; there isn't much emotional satisfaction to be had from calling Dean on his crimes when Jo made her own goddamn choice and Sam appears to be pretty much over his anger at Dean.

Yeah, it was kind of a cop-out. I was hoping that the show would deal with things that Dean actually IS guilty of and that SHOULD be weighing down his heart. Like starting the Apocalypse by breaking the first seal. And memory-wiping Lisa and Ben without their consent. (That was not only wrong, it was STUPID, because while they now don't know anything about him or the supernatural world, the supernatural world still knows about them. AND it knows that they're still important to Dean. So...how does giving them amnesia solve the safety issue again?) Or--shades of the YED--killing Ami (I keep thinking of the kitsune's name as having the Japanese spelling) in front of her son? And this despite the fact that a) kitsunes are tricksters and often deadly, but they are traditionally enemies of evil; b) white-furred kitsunes are often messengers of a god...and Ami had white-blonde hair; c) kitsunes are, according to legend, every bit as capable of choosing good or evil as a human; d) being a kitsune isn't like being an SPN demon--it's a different species rather than a human that was corrupted; and e) Sam and Dean have done FAR worse for each other than occasionally kill a bad guy in order to survive.

And as I recall, the Egyptian gods did NOT like hypocrisy. It weighed against you a lot when they were weighing a heart.

So my question is, was that really Osiris? Or was it one of the Leviathans mindfucking the Winchesters?

Either way, I bet I know who the third witness was going to be--Castiel.

[aria]

Huh, see, whereas I thought -- perhaps because it seemed to me like Dean did -- that the third witness would be Amy, because that was what appeared to be weighing on Dean most heavily this episode -- not killing her, but Sam's unwavering assumption that he didn't. Not that Sam and Dean's trust issues aren't old news, but that seemed to be the emotional core of the episode, and then they ... dodged it. And made it about Dean's guilt re: things that were completely out of his control instead.

Not to say that I wouldn't have liked the third witness to be Castiel, although calling up the spirit of a dead angel raises some theological questions, such as, well, is Cas even still available to be called? Regardless, though, that would also have been an interesting way to go.

Sadly, though, I'm pretty sure that was indeed Osiris, and not a Leviathan thing. Supernatural does have a track record of doing dumb things like making pagan gods cannibals across the board with no good fucking reason, so simplifying and mutilating Osiris isn't really a stretch.

[gehayi]

Well, Jo got called up and she was dead, and Sam got called as a witness and he was alive. So Cas being called as a witness wouldn't prove that he was alive or dead.

Not that Sam and Dean's trust issues aren't old news, but that seemed to be the emotional core of the episode, and then they ... dodged it. And made it about Dean's guilt re: things that were completely out of his control instead.

Agreed. I just would have preferred to have the episode be about things that Dean has done that are wrong rather than things he just feels generically guilty about or his myriad trust issues.

[ste_noni]

The guilt over stuff that he *didn't actually do* was dumb. Especially because, as you said, the trust issue seemed to be the theme, and is a good one, and Dean has plenty to be guilty about. This was so early on I don't remember when, exactly, but there was one episode where Dean's life was saved because someone pointed the reaper in a different direction. (Faith healer, Julie Benz in ep, I think?) That's some well deserved guilt. Plus the previously mentioned Lisa mind wipe. What about bringing in Pamela (I think that was Dean) and then she got killed.

To me, it's just not interesting if Dean is guilty over stuff that he didn't do. I'm more interested in the dynamic of learning to live with your choices.

[daphnie_1]

kgjkljkljk

This show absolutely kills me. On the one hand I like it because it's easy to like and amusing and I like my weekly Monster of the Week show with plot and on the other hand? ALL OF MY RAGE AND ANGER. Jesus, this show. I have only been able to make my way to season 4 because Im watching every episode in order - it's a thing - and I keep having to stop because it gets too much and I know you love dean but I want to hit him about the headspace (I know compared to a lot of this shows issues this is minor but: if you uses the word 'bitch' one.more.time.) except I adore Castiel more than I have words for.

And sometimes the fact that it IS fun and endearing is made more annoying by it's failure. SPN - WHY YOU MAKE ME HATE AND LOVE YOU.