Mind Over Meta

Nov. 21st, 2009

yourlibrarian

07:35 pm - SPN 5.10 - A sign of hope

Ben Edlund, at this rate you're looking like the only writer who is giving us something worth watching. Read more... )

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Nov. 13th, 2009

yourlibrarian

11:32 pm - SPN 5.09 - Make it stop

I found that halfway through this episode I started thinking about columnist Maureen Ryan and something she said about S5: By the way, if Season 5 is terrible, after all these "Watch 'Supernatural'" pieces I've done, I am moving to another country and living under an assumed name. . I haven't been following her columns, but I suspect she's been pretty quiet on the topic of the show lately. Read more... )

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Nov. 6th, 2009

yourlibrarian

10:53 pm - SPN 5.08

This show is breaking my brain. Read more... )

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Oct. 31st, 2009

yourlibrarian

05:11 pm - SPN 5.07 - Not again

I'm afraid my first thought when the episode ended (after my squee for next week's preview) was "fandom would have done this so much better." In fact, part of the problem with this episode that even a better screenplay wouldn't help is that there is too much running under the surface here that isn't touched on. Read more... )

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Oct. 29th, 2009

yourlibrarian

06:35 pm - Writing themes: Mad Men, Buffy, and SPN

I found it interesting that the Mad Men episode this season in which Marti Noxon and Cathryn Humphris collaborated should turn out the be the most soap operatic episode yet. I couldn't help thinking about two other stories Noxon and Humphris had penned, "New Moon Rising" and "Sex and Violence" respectively Read more... )

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Oct. 28th, 2009

yourlibrarian

12:18 pm - The danger in fandom

Regarding this week's Castle's Read more... )

So on to Supernatural! This story about teens breaking into celebrity homes, including that of Paris Hilton, made me think that it was a pity that the SPN episode involving her was such a badly written one. Read more... )

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Oct. 24th, 2009

yourlibrarian

12:18 pm - The Best Written Episodes of SPN S4

It surprised me the other day to notice that I hadn't gone back and discussed what I felt were the strongest episodes of S4, the way I had with S1-S3. I'm not sure why that was but I think that, in part, I was often dissatisfied with episodes as a whole even while I was quite interested with them in part. It didn't take me but 30 seconds to figure out which three were the best though. Read more... )

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Oct. 16th, 2009

yourlibrarian

10:54 pm - SPN 5.06 - Back to the future

Looks like the show is back on track this week. Read more... )

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Oct. 13th, 2009

yourlibrarian

07:25 pm - Victimhood in SPN

I've been thinking about the environment that SPN is set in. We know thanks to interviews and commentary done by Eric Kripke that the Midwest and the music of his youth, namely hard rock from the 1970s and early 80s, were central to his vision of the show. What's left out really is why. To some degree I think everything that creative people do is informed by their experiences in adolescence and we all, I think, tend to increasingly rely on those cultural touchstones the older we get. But I also wonder if it's because the Midwest and some of this music is overshadowed in the media by other representations of the U.S. Read more... )

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Oct. 9th, 2009

yourlibrarian

10:18 pm - SPN 5.05 - It Wasn't Paris' fault

Supernatural S5 seems to be following the Trek movie franchise in its even vs. odd number installments. With episode 4 already being a season standout, and episode 2 a less ambitious but still solid episode, episode 5 disappoints. Read more... )

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Oct. 2nd, 2009

yourlibrarian

09:04 pm - SPN 5.04 - This devil was never a gentleman

I have to say I quite preferred this week's edition of the Dean and Cas show, and the Dean and Dean show wasn't bad either. Read more... )

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Sep. 26th, 2009

yourlibrarian

12:21 am - SPN 5.03 - All over the map

For the first two episodes of this season I was writing down notes immediately after viewing the episode. Not so for this oneRead more... )

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Sep. 18th, 2009

yourlibrarian

09:52 pm - SPN 5.02 - Makeups and Breakups

Snaps for Sera Gamble – there are some things in this episode I think she just nailed, and the rest was certainly passable. In some ways I think this episode was deceptively simple. As I started rewatching I realized she had actually packed a good bit of character development onto the screen, which is likely what made it so satisfying.Read more... )

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Sep. 16th, 2009

yourlibrarian

07:48 pm - Mini Meta Fest: Prompt 1

As part of the the Mini Meta Fest, some thoughts on the second of two prompts:

1. The slash vs het wars. aka: won't someone please think of the multishippers?

I definitely feel sympathy for this POV. As a reader of gen, het, and slash, I really don't understand why there should be conflict there. Perhaps because of my reading preferences, many of the writers I read repeatedly also write in more than one of these veins, so I have to wonder who it is who is having such problems with it?Read more... )

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Sep. 14th, 2009

yourlibrarian

08:55 pm - Mini Meta Fest: Prompt 4

As part of the the Mini Meta Fest, some thoughts on the first of two prompts:

4. Drug use, alcohol, smoking in fanfic

I had to laugh about getting this prompt, because the middle issue relates to something I've mentioned in a few conversations.Read more... )

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Jun. 9th, 2009

yourlibrarian

12:31 pm - Ruminations on the core of SPN

I'd like to begin with what may appear to be a slight digression. I've been wondering if what might make a certain genetic line of humans able to host angels was the result of some angel/human merger way back when. In fact, wouldn't it be interesting if Lucifer was the one who started that host/(maybe hunter) line to begin with? I know Lucifer's supposed to have hated humans but I don't think that would really matter either way. I was just thinking of how in Buffy S7 we discover that Dracula and Spike's hints in S5 and S6 were correct, and that the slayer power came from a demon/human merger. In fact, "empowering a slayer" looked not unlike what we see as demon possessions in SPN, with Buffy stuck in a devil's trap mystical circle while on the other side of the dimensional rift Willow sits in a salt circle mystical circle and tries to bring back.

Which leads me to some interesting developments in SPN S4 which seem to map out a philosophy for the show. Read more... )

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May. 26th, 2009

yourlibrarian

04:19 pm - SPN S3-S5 Arc

Before I go on to discuss what I think might take placein SPN S5, I wanted to throw out a quick observation about toothbrush use in SPN. If I remember right, the first time we ever saw them used was in S3, in Mystery Spot. The day started out normally – normal for Winchesters anyway. Then we see Sam thinking something strange was going on the next day as they brush teeth again, something abnormal in their normality. Read more... )

Which leads us to S5, and looking back at what S4 was all about )

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Mar. 31st, 2009

yourlibrarian

04:16 pm - Missing the Music: Song Use in SPN

I've been mentioning recently in my reviews how much I've been missing the music of SPN in the episodes. As we all know, they were meant to be an integral part of the series, both as part of its retro feel, and also in telling us who these characters are. Out of curiosity I went and did a count, to see if we really are losing more music each season and this is what I came up with:

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Mar. 26th, 2009

yourlibrarian

10:44 pm - Parental stand-ins in SPN

One thing that struck me about the hospital scene between Dean and Castiel in SPN 4.16, which I think many have mentioned, is how Dean was likening Castiel's role to John's when he tells him not to disappear leaving just cryptic remarks behind. Dean felt betrayed by that act of John's, and I think he felt betrayed by Castiel in this episode. Castiel didn't literally send Dean back to hell, but he did put him back there mentally. And both he and John have asked Dean to perform tasks that are unknowable and likely to result in failure. Dean had no idea how to protect Sam from himself, and still doesn't. He also has no idea how to set things right with the seals.
In either case, his failure results in a kind of apocalypse.

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Mar. 11th, 2009

yourlibrarian

10:14 pm - It's About Power - Hospitalization in SPN

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.

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