Things I Love About SPN Season 1: Home (Part 2)

[fanspired]

Continued from Part 1

Warning: image heavy post
Some brief reference to mental health issues

Comments

[bratfarrar]

Oh wow--I never considered that potential connection with Azazel's faction, but wow. It fits really neatly (leaving out the retcon, which I do; for me, through s11 is firm canon, s12 gets a bit wobbly, and I kind of throw s13-15 out the window, at least in terms of lore/characterization. Individual episodes are enjoyable, but it got pretty hit-or-miss in terms of consistency with past material), and also makes her character a little easier for me to accept. Something about her always really bugged me, but you've done a great job of spelling out exactly what, and offering some interesting alternatives from fandom's standard surface-y read.

[fanspired]

Thanks! I'm really pleased you found my breakdown of the character interesting.

You've been more generous with the later seasons than I've been. I can only actually consider the first 5 season canon. They told a complete story that made perfect sense. Season 6 and parts of 7 still felt like 'show' to me because I think Sera Gamble was genuinely trying to keep up Kripke's legacy, but I think she started losing control of the writing team soon after his departure. Everything from S8 onward I regard as professional fan fiction at best.

[bratfarrar]

Ah, well, I can understand that. But I didn't start actively watching until the end of s9, so that probably skews my preferences for what I consider "canon"--making the showrunner I started with the endpoint for canon. :P

I do think from a characterization and (mostly) a lore standpoint, s12 is where things started getting significantly dodgy; the start of s8 aside, for me Carter's run held together relatively well with the Kripke/Gamble era, with s11 as a second season-long highpoint after s2. (But then, I've always been a MotW kind of gal....)

[fanspired]

I can certainly understand that coming in at season 9 would give you a very different perspective on the show. You started watching at a point where I was strongly considering giving up, and my husband actually did give it up. At the time, though, I was tied in by a SPN serial I was writing, and I felt I needed to know what was going on on the show since most of my readers were still watching. Coming to regard it all as professional fan fiction was my coping mechanism for dealing with the sense of disconnect I felt between the Kripke and post-Kripke eras.

[bratfarrar]

"Professional fanfiction" is how I wind up treating many sequels/adaptations, etc.--and definitely fits how I wound up treating s13-15. The attempt to force Wayward Sisters (or whatever the title was supposed to be) into existence utterly broke my connection with the show. Alas. :(

Ah well, it was a pretty good run prior to that.

[fanspired]

I suspect the mistake with both Wayward Sisters and Bloodlines was in the attempts to create series that would appeal to the CW's target audience, but air them as backdoor pilots in a show whose core audience was entirely different from the rest of the CW's shows.

[bratfarrar]

Definitely! Once I started thinking of Bloodlines as a crossover episode with a show that didn't actually exist, I felt much more kindly toward it. Unfortunately, Wayward Sisters was so obtrusive into the season as a whole, that I can't manage even that.

[fanspired]

That's a great way of looking at Bloodlines! 😁 And I totally agree about WS intrusiveness.

[bratfarrar]

I'm not sure where "obtrusive" came from, but since it's probably an accidental combination of "obtuse" and "intrusive", I'm going to leave it. Definitely fits WS! :P

[fanspired]

Definitely! 😆