Supernatural
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14th August 2021 @ 4:06 pm
I’ve never watched Supernatural and I don’t think I ever will but the fandom surrounding it is so fascinating to me. I love to listen to podcasts or watch YouTube videos breaking all the controversies down and analyzing the show. I honestly have no idea, most of the time, what characters or plots they’re referring to, and it’s no different this time with Thinky Thoughts 😅 That being said, though, I really liked this episode and how it zoomed out enough for me to get the general picture and understand more
about why this show creates so much passionate discourse! The comparison with other long running action/adventure shows and the pros and cons of that (Buffy and Battlestar Galactica, specifically) was interesting, I haven’t stopped to wonder why Buffy got things so right where other shows have really struggled with that (I’m a big BSG fan, too, though, and I would loooove to head a TT episode about that show!).
I was surprised that the queer baiting controversy didn’t come up much on this episode, cause that seems to come up a lot on the YouTube videos 😂 I’d like to hear ya’lls thoughts on that, but I understand if it takes away from talking about the show as a whole, or gets too close to intense shipper politics?
Anyway, always enjoyable, thanks again!
18th August 2021 @ 10:25 am
absolutely same! We had three episodes noted that we wanted to go back to and watch, as they had buffy actors in them… and we just never did. I think Ruth says it on the podcast and it’s really true. The second I stop watching supernatural, I forget it exists… which is mostly because of the way we were watching it this time around, dipping in an out of each season in a mad ‘we must finish this list of 60 episodes’. but even before. I bought the S1 box set. we watched 80% of it. then we put it down and never ever went back to it. out of sight, out of mind… it’s mad! haha
I’m very glad the episode worked for you, despite not being a supernatural fan. the aim was to make it quite general, without making it sound like a wiki pedia entry hahahaha
gosh, I’ve not watched BSG since I was about 15, and even then, I never watched it in a very serious manner, just whenever I turned on the TV and it happened to be on. That would definitely require an awful lot more work and rewatching than I think we currently have the brain power for. but yeah, BSG and babylon 5 we have several votes for us discussing at some point, so hey, you never know… 🙂
–I was surprised that the queer baiting controversy didn’t come up much on this episode, cause that seems to come up a lot on the YouTube videos 😂 —
haha I bet it does! Honestly, for me more than anything else, Supernatural isn’t my fandom, and therefore I don’t know the ins and outs of it, I didn’t suffer the pain of watching it episode by episode and living through it all, I didn’t get to the end of the season and felt betrayed by every person involved in creating this show… As you said at the start, it’s a fascinating fandom, and I absolutely understand the passion, the frustration, and the anger… but it would feel weirdly like appropriation if I tried to jump on the queer baiting discussion, without actually being a “proper fan”. dunno if that makes sense, but yeah, I would feel not even necessarily out of my depths talking about it, because it’s very clear what happened, but like I’m commentating the train crash from the spectator seats, cashing in on a tragedy? again, no idea if that makes any sense! sorry!! haha
M Xx
19th December 2020 @ 11:35 pm
Supernatural was a weird one for me too. I watched the first couple of seasons either because of Tumblr or because a school friend was into it (I don’t remember which came first), and then after I kind of started to lose interest in it I watched more specifically because of that friend who had basically just discovered fandom for herself (we were probably around 15, so I’d been in the Merlin fandom for a couple of years and she’d always found it a bit weird, but by the time we were 18 she was reading Harry Potter fanfiction and had bought Supernatural funko pops (is that what they’re called? The little figurine things)). Anyway, I reached the reason with Dick – I don’t remember who Dick was, or why he was important, only that there were a lot of phallic jokes about him. I remember liking the monster of the week episodes, and I’ve always liked stuff with fun lore, and Dean’s angst had good fic potential… Over time, though, I think it was just the potential that kept me thinking I liked it more than I did. I mean, I enjoyed talking about the show with my friend, but outside of that I think I had a similar relationship with Supernatural as I did with Sherlock: I enjoyed the world of the show, and I liked the overall image of the characters when they were isolated in my mind from the plots, which meant that I enjoyed fanfiction with them in a great deal. The more distance I had from the shows, though, the more I could see the multitude of problems with them, and thus my feelings on them kind of soured, because neither had any emotional resonance with me the way Merlin did. There are Sherlock fanfictions that I still remember very clearly (and a bunch of probably-worse-than-I-remember Supernatural fics that kind of blend into one but that as a group were part of my teenage “shit I’m probably trans” process), but I’m not invested in or interested in anything about them any more, despite thinking I liked them at the time.
The escalation issue meant that there’s something really odd about hearing you talking about episodes I haven’t seen – “how did you feel about the reveal that Chuck is God?” – WHAT? I vaguely remembered the author dude once you mentioned him, if that’s the storyline that included the “omg we have shippers?” bit… he’s … god? Right. Ok. Huh.
29th December 2020 @ 1:49 pm
It’s intersting that you compare it to Sherlock, because I’ve got this super odd thing with Sherlock where I’ve watched every episode, I was waiting expectantly between seasons, for all the 27 years it took each time, and I was convinced I loved it. I was happily telling people I loved it. never to a point of buying the merch or anything (funko pop is totally what they are called, yes. I never understood the point of them?? Anyway… haha) but what you’re saying about thinking that you like it better than you actually do makes so much sense… I think there are shows that I am convinced I like, because of what I’ve turned them into in my head. I never get to a point of reading fic about them (so I’ve never read supernatural fic, or sherlock fic for that matter or similar shows to that) but I’m sort of turning the entire show into a fic in my head. And i’m just sort of over-ruling the bits that don’t make sense, and making them work in my head, and therefore forgetting that this didn’t actually happen in canon, so when I say ‘I love this show, and what they do with XYZ’ people think I’m weird, because XYZ didn’t actually happen in the show, or certainly didn’t happen in the way it did in my head…
Love your friend’s transition from ‘what is this fandom weirdness you speak of?’ to fully immersed in fandom! you still friends with them?
–The escalation issue meant that there’s something really odd about hearing you talking about episodes I haven’t seen – “how did you feel about the reveal that Chuck is God?” – WHAT? I vaguely remembered the author dude once you mentioned him, if that’s the storyline that included the “omg we have shippers?” bit… he’s … god? Right. Ok. Huh.–
hahaha yeah, that guy… and from what I’ve gleamed from writes in and discussions around the episode, it seems that fans basically fanonised this when Chuck first appeared, and seemingly the writers decided to take the fanon and turn it into reality by making it canon. I don’t know how much of that is true, of course, but seems to be a universally accepted truth from what I can tell
M Xx
19th December 2020 @ 1:51 am
You both did a great job of picking apart the monsters, angels, demons, apocalypses, etc. I wish I liked Buffy so I could relate to some of your references. I watched all 327 episodes this year- I never even knew about it in the 14 years before this. For me, the draw to the show is the brothers arc- how they deal with all the crap they go through, both personal crises and global crises. True, there is no linear progression, 2 steps forward, 1 step back – but I think that is quite realistic in how people grow (kind of reminiscent of Arthur and Merlin- BTW I only started watching SPN because it was recommended to me on Netflix since I binged Merlin- 3 times- earlier in the year). The monster of the weeks, the apocalypses, etc., are places they change and develop their characters- the crisis arcs are not necessarily the draw for me (although some were better than others). On the other hand, they do some interesting things that most other shows can’t or won’t attempt.
The comment that the seasons don’t end in a victory is certainly true but it is a more realistic depiction of life than a typical happily ever after. It is a testimony to facing life in all its challenges and never give up. This show definitely doesn’t try to blow sunshine up your skirt with the expectation of success at the end of the season like so many shows do. Always keep fighting.
I do totally agree that John and Mary are horrible characters as they were very negative influences on Sam and Dean. In listening to interviews, the show was not supposed to be Dean’s story, it was supposed to be Sam’s story. But I do agree with your comment that Dean is the anchor of the story.
BTW, they shot the show in Vancouver not Toronto.
29th December 2020 @ 12:49 pm
Oh no! What is it about Buffy that you don’t like? I’m sorry, there must be an insane amount of references you just switch off during, when listening to our podcasts, as we’re hardly ever not talking about Buffy, whether we’re talking about Buffy or not haha
I love that you came to SPN in season 14 and watched ALL OF IT before season 15. That’s a pretty awsome accomplishment, and also a really interesting perspective to come at this from, as 15 years of anything, even if people are the biggest fans, watching it in real time means that other TV shows happen, actors do stuff that you learn about, and real life happens… so I can’t blame anyone who got distracted and stopped watching (for a while, or permanently) but it does mean that I know very few people who watched all of it, and even the people that did watch all of it, watched half of it enthusiastically, and then half of it in a binge because they felt they had to, or with a severe lack of attention, to just get through it. that kind of thing. so your POV is super intersting in this.
–I do totally agree that John and Mary are horrible characters as they were very negative influences on Sam and Dean. —
so glad that seems to be a universally accepted thing!! except the show doesn’t seem to know about it, but that’s okay haha
–BTW, they shot the show in Vancouver not Toronto.–
Yes! thank you 🙂
–The comment that the seasons don’t end in a victory is certainly true but it is a more realistic depiction of life than a typical happily ever after. It is a testimony to facing life in all its challenges and never give up. This show definitely doesn’t try to blow sunshine up your skirt with the expectation of success at the end of the season like so many shows do. Always keep fighting.–
I do like the realism, and the ‘keep fighting, no matter what, even if all seems hopeless’. I guess I just prefere it mixed in with a few wins, every now and again. And it really is just about the pacing, because you could stop each season finale 5 minutes before the end, and it would end happy (well, not all, like not the ones where they go to hell, but some of them) because they’ve won and things are good! Needing to afterwards make sure everything goes to hell in a handbasket gives it that feel of ‘if we don’t blow something up after they’re all happy, our viewers will NEVER COME BACK’. Which just gives the whole show an edge of desperation that I’m not a big fan of.
I guess I’d just prefere if some seasons ended badly, some seasons ended happy. that way you also never know what to expect, which I quite like as well, especially in something as long running as SPN.
Hope that made some sense! lol
M Xx