Why SPN Needs To Catch A Case of “Glee” (spoilers for SPN 6x08 and Glee 2x06)
Bargggh! Hello, flist! Breaking radio silence! :D I feel like I've been stuck in a well for the last month or two or five, but (I think?) I've escaped for now. *looks around* Freedom means fandom dorkery, which means Show, which means mindless nattering, which sometimes means meta. \o/ So ... after watching this past week’s episode of "Glee
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But the “consolation” of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires. Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would venture to assert that all complete fairy-stories must have it. At least I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite-I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.
The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale-or otherworld-setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories"
This season the writers seem to have forgotten (to date) that SPN, as story, stands on the borders of Faërie and therefore needs to abide by its rules.
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