THE FAMILY BUSINESS
I'm caught up on Supernatural????
The flatmate and I spent ALL OF JUNE rewatching the entirety of this fucking show. I had watched season seven on a burn after the finale had aired, and never started season eight, although I never blacklisted it on Tumblr and only mostly avoided spoilers, so I knew the highlights even if I couldn't put them in context.
It's interesting, watching it now, because I recall all of the moments the fandom freaked out over, and a lot more things are making sense, but I'm still so detached from all of it, you know? Like, this is the first season I watched where a lot of my spn people are out of the fandom, and I don't really know where to go, and I watched the whole season in a few days without any processing time in between episodes. Fandom always helped the characters feel real: we talked about new characters and gave them depth and discussed their motivations, and just...yeah, made them real in a way that I haven't quite gotten yet with this season. I already know I need to rewatch it again before season nine airs to get the details down that I've got the big picture, but I need to catch up on fandom before that happens.
That being said, I would gladly take all episode reaction and fic recs, if any of y'all have got them. I've been to the old places I used to go to, and so many people are just not in the fandom anymore, and Tumblr's a fucking mess to do this kind of shit on, and really, this is the most lost I've felt in a fandom in years.
But. To get my initial thoughts out:
I generally really liked the season? It might just be because I haven't had new spn material in so long, or because I don't have the fandom here to make me more critical, but I enjoyed it, a lot.
Of course, I'm with the fandom in general on a lot of things, and I'm mad about a lot of things I recall them being mad about, but I expected it to be a lot worse than it was, given the fandom's reaction.
Yes, I hated Sam not looking for Dean. They butchered Sam's character in the beginning, if you ask me. Like everyone was saying, there is character development and then there is character regression, and Sam was just an example of regression and lazy writing. Having a normal life wasn't his thing anymore. He was in, he was motivated, and losing Dean was such a blow to him that I don't think he would have been capable of just going off and getting something normal. I get that he didn't have anybody and that he freaked, but canonically? He chooses not to have anybody else when Dean is gone; he goes cold and detached when he doesn't have Dean, and that's even when he's sick of the life.
Watching the whole thing all the way through was so fucking good for tracking both his and Dean's character and motivations, and it just didn't mesh at all with what we'd been seeing up to that point. Really, their development was awesomely done, watching it all at once--a lot of the pacing issues I had before disappeared when there were no hiatuses, and there was a traceable, understandable change re: wanting a normal life IN BOTH OF THEM. And then Sam fucking shows up in the beginning of eight and is back to wanting out of the life? Yeah, how about NO.
So that sucked big time for me. But I loved Amelia, and I like what they did with the situation, even if I hated having that situation in the first place.
BENNY! I fucking loved Benny and I really, really did not expect to. I hated the idea of him from seeing him on Tumblr, and I thought I'd hate the idea of Dean having a friend that Sam didn't like, but holy shit I loved THE CRAP out of Benny. The Dean-breaking-up-with
Benny convo that he has with Charlie was fucking great and I just...I really, really liked the way they dealt with him, start to finish.
CAS. I could say a lot about Cas, but I don't quite have the words yet. Being out of fandom is the best thing that has ever happened to my relationship with Castiel, because I could like him this time around without resentment, and that was wonderful. Fandom did terrible, terrible things to my reception of Cas, and it so goddamn nice this time around to be able to love him like I always knew I could love him. And I've been waiting for human!Cas since the finale first aired, so I am really excited for season nine for that aspect.
Metatron was not the douchebag I was expecting??? Like Christ, the way fandom talked about him, I was expected to loathe him in the same way I loathed Umbridge, but he...wasn't that bad? He wasn't annoying or preachy or obviously evil, and generally I like having him around as an antagonist??? Idk, I don't quite get where all of the hate is coming from.
Sam and Dean. SAM AND DEAN. I'm not even going to try to make words because I'm still just rainbows and tears and emotions about it, but it was good for me, okay? Very, very good.
The Batcave/Men of Letters thing? AWESOME. All they fucking needed was a home, okay, like let's not talk about that EVER because no.
My perfect ending? Honestly? Sam stays in the Batcave and does the Men of Letters thing, and Dean is his special hunter that he informs. Cas is out hunting with Dean, and they come home and hang out with Sam and have sex and they have their separate lives, sure, but they're together and Dean can still kill things with his baby and Sam can have some semblance of normalcy and his books and his life (because yeah, I'm fucking ignoring the canon I think is wack) and they live happily ever after, okay? Okay.
I have a lot of feelings about doing the whole show at once, and there's so much I could say about pacing and continuity and how my personal feelings have changed--both about the show as a whole but also about seasons in particular--but it would be long and messy and probably not interesting to anyone but me, but basically I am DROWNING IN FEELS over here.
Taking the season off was a great move, apparently, because I am back in this shit and cannot fucking wait for season nine, oh my god.
DW post here. Comment there? |
The flatmate and I spent ALL OF JUNE rewatching the entirety of this fucking show. I had watched season seven on a burn after the finale had aired, and never started season eight, although I never blacklisted it on Tumblr and only mostly avoided spoilers, so I knew the highlights even if I couldn't put them in context.
It's interesting, watching it now, because I recall all of the moments the fandom freaked out over, and a lot more things are making sense, but I'm still so detached from all of it, you know? Like, this is the first season I watched where a lot of my spn people are out of the fandom, and I don't really know where to go, and I watched the whole season in a few days without any processing time in between episodes. Fandom always helped the characters feel real: we talked about new characters and gave them depth and discussed their motivations, and just...yeah, made them real in a way that I haven't quite gotten yet with this season. I already know I need to rewatch it again before season nine airs to get the details down that I've got the big picture, but I need to catch up on fandom before that happens.
That being said, I would gladly take all episode reaction and fic recs, if any of y'all have got them. I've been to the old places I used to go to, and so many people are just not in the fandom anymore, and Tumblr's a fucking mess to do this kind of shit on, and really, this is the most lost I've felt in a fandom in years.
But. To get my initial thoughts out:
I generally really liked the season? It might just be because I haven't had new spn material in so long, or because I don't have the fandom here to make me more critical, but I enjoyed it, a lot.
Of course, I'm with the fandom in general on a lot of things, and I'm mad about a lot of things I recall them being mad about, but I expected it to be a lot worse than it was, given the fandom's reaction.
Yes, I hated Sam not looking for Dean. They butchered Sam's character in the beginning, if you ask me. Like everyone was saying, there is character development and then there is character regression, and Sam was just an example of regression and lazy writing. Having a normal life wasn't his thing anymore. He was in, he was motivated, and losing Dean was such a blow to him that I don't think he would have been capable of just going off and getting something normal. I get that he didn't have anybody and that he freaked, but canonically? He chooses not to have anybody else when Dean is gone; he goes cold and detached when he doesn't have Dean, and that's even when he's sick of the life.
Watching the whole thing all the way through was so fucking good for tracking both his and Dean's character and motivations, and it just didn't mesh at all with what we'd been seeing up to that point. Really, their development was awesomely done, watching it all at once--a lot of the pacing issues I had before disappeared when there were no hiatuses, and there was a traceable, understandable change re: wanting a normal life IN BOTH OF THEM. And then Sam fucking shows up in the beginning of eight and is back to wanting out of the life? Yeah, how about NO.
So that sucked big time for me. But I loved Amelia, and I like what they did with the situation, even if I hated having that situation in the first place.
BENNY! I fucking loved Benny and I really, really did not expect to. I hated the idea of him from seeing him on Tumblr, and I thought I'd hate the idea of Dean having a friend that Sam didn't like, but holy shit I loved THE CRAP out of Benny. The Dean-breaking-up-with
Benny convo that he has with Charlie was fucking great and I just...I really, really liked the way they dealt with him, start to finish.
CAS. I could say a lot about Cas, but I don't quite have the words yet. Being out of fandom is the best thing that has ever happened to my relationship with Castiel, because I could like him this time around without resentment, and that was wonderful. Fandom did terrible, terrible things to my reception of Cas, and it so goddamn nice this time around to be able to love him like I always knew I could love him. And I've been waiting for human!Cas since the finale first aired, so I am really excited for season nine for that aspect.
Metatron was not the douchebag I was expecting??? Like Christ, the way fandom talked about him, I was expected to loathe him in the same way I loathed Umbridge, but he...wasn't that bad? He wasn't annoying or preachy or obviously evil, and generally I like having him around as an antagonist??? Idk, I don't quite get where all of the hate is coming from.
Sam and Dean. SAM AND DEAN. I'm not even going to try to make words because I'm still just rainbows and tears and emotions about it, but it was good for me, okay? Very, very good.
The Batcave/Men of Letters thing? AWESOME. All they fucking needed was a home, okay, like let's not talk about that EVER because no.
My perfect ending? Honestly? Sam stays in the Batcave and does the Men of Letters thing, and Dean is his special hunter that he informs. Cas is out hunting with Dean, and they come home and hang out with Sam and have sex and they have their separate lives, sure, but they're together and Dean can still kill things with his baby and Sam can have some semblance of normalcy and his books and his life (because yeah, I'm fucking ignoring the canon I think is wack) and they live happily ever after, okay? Okay.
I have a lot of feelings about doing the whole show at once, and there's so much I could say about pacing and continuity and how my personal feelings have changed--both about the show as a whole but also about seasons in particular--but it would be long and messy and probably not interesting to anyone but me, but basically I am DROWNING IN FEELS over here.
Taking the season off was a great move, apparently, because I am back in this shit and cannot fucking wait for season nine, oh my god.
DW post here. Comment there? |