Hi I'm new! *waves* I'm re-reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on yaoi with you. (No HP meta and no HP tags? I find this unsettling.)
So, about English in GoF (link goes to my journal)
I found it interesting to realize that we haven't yet seen Sam hospitalized, whereas it's happened with Dean twice (three times if we count his sick ward scene in Folsom), John once, and Bobby once, and we have had stories take place, in part, in hospital settings such as Something Wicked and Bedtime Stories, both, interestingly enough, which involved children. There was also the psychiatric hospital in Asylum, and scenes in similar (unhaunted) institutions in HotH, I Know What You Did, ASS, plus the hospital interview scene in Fresh Blood. The only possible exception I could think of was the medical clinic setting of Croatoan, where Sam is attacked and is given some medical treatment.
So even though realistically speaking Sam and Dean should both be ending up in a hospital on a regular basis, why is it Dean that's always lying there near death? I'd speculate that there's two reasons.
Posted in support of The IJ Asylum Meme (January 2009 Edition)
It’s never struck me from interviews that Eric Kripke is really all that interested in the characters of Sam and Dean. I don’t mean to say he is disinterested but simply that it’s never been a focus of his. I gathered this from the DVD extras on S1 and it was pretty much confirmed from watching the Paley Festival session. For him SPN began as a case files type of story and the characters were literally an afterthought after his original idea was scrapped. I also gathered that it’s really Bob Singer, other writers and even Kim Manners who are more interested in the character exploration that most fic writers also latch onto, and who are largely responsible for fleshing out Sam and Dean. By comparison, for Joss Whedon the characters were everything and the story simply serviced our need to see the characters grow and and interact with one another.
I say this to explain why I think it’s impossible to determine from the outside what the intention actually was for Sam and Dean’s relationship because it seems to have been developed largely on the fly and with various hands at work on it. Certainly they were supposed to be both drawn together and yet antagonistic and I think that’s established pretty well in S1. But in watching “Asylum” (and “Skin”) in particular it seems to me that the relationship between the two was intended to be far more antagonistic than it was ever portrayed. While we can’t be too sure of the truth in what the shapeshifter tells Sam about how Dean resents him, as far as we can tell, Sam is being himself (if an enraged self) in Asylum when he tells Dean how much he hates him right back and is, in fact, willing to kill him. That’s a jump beyond annoyed, or resentful, the way anyone might feel about someone they’re in constantly close quarters with. At the end Sam tells Dean he didn’t mean it and it’s shrugged off, never to be spoken of again. My own sense was that Sam felt more guilty and alarmed at what he was capable of doing. This, after all, was a character who had never killed another person and who was as yet quite empathetic even with the spirits they hunted. You’d think that nearly killing anyone would have to truly shake him. ( Read more... )
Not long ago there was a blog post about how Supernatural compared to Buffy, and whether the poster should try out the show. Personally I thought these were two separate issues. While I found Buffy to be a high quality show in many ways, I've enjoyed those that aren't so good and I've enjoyed ones that may be better. To me that's like suggesting that one should only read one book series ever because others just aren't as good.
However the short answer is no, but I was intrigued by some of the arguments people made for why it was. The most interesting to me was where someone pointed out that the first of Buffy's landmark episodes, "Hush" didn't come along until S4, and we've only just reached that milestone with SPN. Aside from saying emphatically that "Heaven and Hell" was no "Hush," I thought that this wasn't true. I think the first landmark episode for Buffy was actually "Innocence."
My various meta posts on SPN S4 episodes can be found here. Spoilers for each of the episodes discussed but no future spoilers.
Following from several posts I’ve read re: the whole issue of love interests and their development in stories I had some thoughts as it relates to BtVS. They began with Riley, who along with Oz, Tara, and Kennedy seem the characters most clearly developed for the ( purpose of being love interests )
I've been following some of the conversation going on about Penny, but as I haven't much more to add to what other people are already saying well, I wanted to look at the larger picture.
I started watching "Life on Mars" this week and within an episode began thinking of Mad Men and why this particular series should be the latest effort of American producers to redo a British show. And it seems to me the reason is pernicious. Don't get me wrong, I think both series are worth watching and Mad Men in particular is very well written. But it's rather interesting how the historical settings conveniently allow for the expression of viewpoints and exclusion of people that white male writers would
prefer to indulge in (or not).
Writing about Henriksen in JiB and Bela in BDaBR in my last post made me want to take a look at the issue of recurring characters in SPN.
Some months ago I wrote about what I thought were the best written episodes of S1 and S2, and I thought I'd do the same with S3 now that it's ended. Also includes spoilers for SPN Rising Son Issues 1 and 2
When thinking over the final episode of S3, I was noting something odd about the scene when Sam hesitates to kill the child he thinks Lilith is possessing. It led me to realize this is an issue I've been seeing with a lot more frequency, and looking back to S1 I think there really has been a change in the way the show deals with non-recurring characters.
(1) The view of families is becoming increasingly negative in its portrayal on the show.
(2) The characters of the week in general are becoming more disposable this season.
For a while now, I've been curious what people see as the common stories in SPN. Some time ago I wrote about the types of stories I tended to see in Spike/Xander fanfic in BtVS. Now that I've been reading around in SPN fic for a while I think I can identify a few categories, but I'm interested in other ideas. I'm not focusing on what typical fanfic plots tend to get used (first times, spell goes awry, bodyswapping, amnesia, etc.), but rather, how canon and characters tend to get repeatedly reshaped.
giandujakiss has posted a wonderful Spike/Angel vid. Although the idea behind it was rather simple I really like what she did with her cuts and contrasts, and
it made me rather thinky in spots.
Revising an essay I wrote about the similar positioning of Dean from Supernatural and Spike from the Buffyverse, I also looked at changes in Dean's character in S3 of the series.
During the writer's strike I decided to use one of my Amazon gift certificates to buy some DVDs. Since I had tried out a few episode of Gilmore Girls and just couldn't get into it (there was something artificial and grating about the dialogue) I decided to get S2 of Dark Angel instead. The concept had interested me when it was on, but I'd never gotten around to watching it. I read some of the reviews and it sounded like there was something of a reboot in S2 with a lot of characters written out and some new ones written in, so I decided to go straight to S2 instead of watching in order.
At first I wasn't terribly impressed. I thought there were some good concepts at work, but the writing wasn't all that, the acting was so-so, and I thought the post-pulse world was rather a mixed bag in terms of presentation. But, you know, I'd bought the set and it wasn't awful so I kept watching. Oddly enough this rather describes my initial attitude towards SPN S1. (After two rewatches I actually feel a bit nostalgic for it).
Back to DA. The first episode that really caught my attention was Medium is the Message.
![[mood icon]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/mood/weather/sad.gif){kind=small}
hungryThe Buffy S8 comics storyline made me start wondering about seasonal Big Bads, specifically that of BtVS S5. I also started pondering how the Big Bad is never quite what we think it is.
My best example for that would be BtVS Season 6. It's been stated at various times that "Life" was the real villain of that year, and that the Troika and Buffy's arc represented the confusion and aimlessness that often characterizes one's early 20s. But it seems to me from the storylines that the real message was "we are our own worst enemy." Xander, Willow, and Buffy's storylines, and even secondary characters such as the Troika, Spike, Giles, Tara's etc. all seemed to come down to bringing ruin upon themselves by not taking responsibility for something. Had each taken the harder road rather than the easier one, much of the grief could have been avoided. The only person who seems exempt from this is Dawn, perhaps because she is the only non-adult at that point. I was struck by the fact that she never actually seems sorry for her actions in "Older and Far Away." Everyone else ends up the season plenty sorry though.
On the face of it, S1 seemed the clearest with the Master appearing in episode 1
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When: Friday, March 21, midnight to midnight anywhere on earth. (So, if it's already Friday somewhere in the world, go ahead and post - if it's still Friday somewhere in the world, go ahead and post.)
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Master-list of meta posts - comment with link and topic to be added!
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das_dingsi's IJ Asylum Meme. (Everybody's welcome, not only writers of meta! Join the party!)
Thanks, yourlibrarian, for letting us pimp this here :o) !
A post on Wincest in Supernatural and the latest Buffy issue #12, started me on a train of thought about what I'd call "circles of reality", which I talk about here. Spoilers for SPN 3.12 and Buffy issue 12.
perplexedA conversation with shadowscast about her drabble at the LJ site churchofjoss led me to think about religion, Riley and his relationship with Buffy.
( Read more... )
Robots, Humans and Gods in "A.I." - Part One:
The Performance of Artificiality
[Cross-posted to my journal here.]
This is a meandering essay about the movie A.I. - Artificial Intelligence in two parts. I'll first describe my initial exposure to the movie via its official music video, then deal with the performance of machines -- called "mechas" -- as opposed to humans (with a special focus on body language and communication patterns of the robot Gigolo Joe), and some problems inherent to discussions of artificial intelligence.
The second part will be about the themes of dependency, love, and worship prevalent in the movie that should have us go "Aww!", but are actually creepy and heartbreaking. All in my humble opinion, of course.
Spoiler Notes: As for the actual movie, I'm not giving away the end, and only mention the basic plot. The most spoilerish things you'll encounter are dialogue quotes and musings on the characters' behaviour, including a bit of behind-the-scenes information taken from the Bonus DVD and online articles. So, if you haven't seen it, you should be safe.
( On with the show. )
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