Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Anonymous asked: Idea for a Buzzfeed quiz: We Can Tell How Old You Are Based On What Season You Stopped Watching Supernatural. Stopped watching in season 5? You got: 20 years old *that gif of Adam still in Hell*

I’m fucking wheezing this is so funny, someone with a friend in Buzzfeed do it and link me.

Also I have no idea if this is the gif you meant but it was the first one that came up under ‘adam supernatural’ and I’m cackling.

Originally posted by netflix-enslaved

All right, @notsumma it won’t let me reply directly to your reply on the SPN Tirade because this website is CONSTANTLY in need of a white knight (I love X-Kit guys) and is currently acting up with that function, so here we go:

so assuming that by s7 the show you liked was 4 years dead, that lines up with Eric Kripke’s opinion. you know, the creator of the show. he wanted to stop at the end of s3, but the network was like ‘nah, we’re making  money.’ then at the end of s5 he didn’t reup his contract, so everything from s6 on is just high-production-value fanfiction.

THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH, the first three seasons are good fun–it ain’t Shakespeare, but I knew what I was getting into–and even up to five…sort of hung together, at the very least, and then it goes OFF THE GODDAMN RAILS, wow, this answers so many questions.  And also, like, basically I was right?  It’s basically two totally different Frankenshows with the same characters and premise loosely divided by the whole Lucifer situation.

Anonymous asked: So your rant on Supernatural? Also I fell in love with the story you're talking about and basically want to know more. Sorry.

My buddy, you have made An Error, but let’s do this shit.  To any SPN fans who have wound up here through Ye Olde Search Function, I encourage you to stop reading now.

I watched up to about halfway through Season Five before I decided that I could Do It Better (I think this is the novel you’re talking about, anon, unless it’s Earth is where the trouble comes from), and dragged myself up to about halfway through Season Seven before I packed it in and gave up, resigned that the parts of the show I loved were about four to five seasons dead.  So like that’s the information I’m working on here.

So, obviously, lots of people have lots of legitimate complaints about Supernatural, including treatment of queer characters, characters of color, and women, as well as their fairly rampant history of queerbaiting.  And lots of people have covered this in more competent detail than I could ever manage, so like google “sexism in Supernatural” or something and you can do your own reading there.  Hell, if you want to do it the lazy way, you can knock out two of the above with this one article in friendly, easy-to-read Buzzfeed format.  To the nominal credit of the people involved, I will add that the cast seems acutely aware of these problems and finds it distasteful, HOWEVER the problems persist and therefore that credit is minimal.  Anyway. These things are covered much more thoroughly by many other people who are far more cogent than I could hope to be, so I’m going to leave those alone.

Instead, my rant is mostly summed up as “YOU CALL THIS SHIT STORYTELLING.”

So there are four basic parts to this rant, or rather four basic flaws that form the fundamentally weak foundation of Supernatural as a narrative.

1. Failure to commit to a single cohesive narrative arc, also known as “SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THOSE” syndrome
   
2. The persistent and erroneous belief that character death = character development and narrative progression
   
3. Inability to commit to a major change of paradigm, also known as out and out narrative cowardice, which I personally call “flinching during Plot Roulette”
   
4. Total incapacity to put their characterization where their script is regarding the Winchester brothers and the other major players
   

*cracks knuckles*

Keep reading