Comments | pocochina: let me make a GREAT impression on my new f-listers!

pocochina

let me make a GREAT impression on my new f-listers!

Jan 21, 2013 20:49

(I actually assume we've all done our due diligence and nobody will be particularly surprised by my, um, opinionated tone! But I do usually put a little more thought into posts than this, ftr. And also, this is an SPN post but HI to all new people! *tackle-glomps*)

I was going to write a thoughtful response to a set of complaints I saw tonight* ( Read more... )

spn: sammay!, supernatural, lawl internet, anxiety, rape culture

Comments 27

obsessive_a101 January 22 2013, 17:04:59 UTC

Nice post... of course, I still haven't watched. :D My SPN enabler (aka: little sister) has completely dropped the show for now in the face of fandom frustrations, and therefore, I am free to avoid as I see fit... and I avoid things, usually, pretty well. XD

That said, it's still very interesting to read your posts. Also, Amanda Tapping is apparently playing a 'bag-of-dicks' (as my sister chooses to phrase it) angel? LOL I don't even know anymore.

pocochina January 22 2013, 17:51:07 UTC

aw, you should, it's still really good! The more obnoxious parts of fandom have been howling as loudly as ever, but that is how they show their love, I guess.

obsessive_a101 January 22 2013, 18:00:24 UTC

It's not so much that I will never watch the show again so much as I am trying to regroup my attention span to make sure I'll be able to focus on watching. ><" My last flare did a number on my ability to concentrate, and I am generally all over the place at the moment. I also discovered new musicals and classic movies on Netflix as well as The West Wing. An overabundance of choice - apparently - can actually really be an issue. LOL

That said, at the moment I've mostly downgraded to the somewhat 5 minute length episode of the P&P remake The Lizzie Bennet Diaries in which Lydia is stunningly well done and am waiting anxiously for weekly manga updates. Short little things. >>" I think once my ability to cope with feelings recovers - I may start watching BtVS or SPN once again. LOL

pocochina January 22 2013, 18:05:03 UTC

I still haven't watched Lizzie Bennett Diaries! I don't know why. I don't think I like waiting for webisodes, I'll watch the whole thing.

THE WEST WING. <333

Hope you feel better soon love!

Thread 5

shineyma January 22 2013, 21:42:04 UTC

Oh, wow. It sounds like Sam's arc has gone very interesting (aka AWESOME) places since I stopped watching.

It's not fair to connect Sam with Wesley--you'll lure me into watching again!

I'm sorry you have to deal with general fandom stupidity! You can't get away from it anywhere. :(

pocochina January 23 2013, 00:21:17 UTC

*lures*

Yeah, I usually recommend Supernatural with caveats, but if Wes really works for you, you'll probably be into Sam. MY BABIES &c.

shineyma January 23 2013, 00:35:32 UTC

Hah, I just don't know if I can. I really loved Supernatural up through the third season. Unfortunately, the fourth season (during which I stopped watching) made me really uncomfortable. I'm Catholic, you see, so the whole angel vs angel searching for God thing was just a little too...I don't know what word to use. But I just couldn't stand to watch it anymore.

But I had lots of Winchester feels when I did watch. I guess it's just a feels-inducing show.

cuddyclothes January 23 2013, 23:17:40 UTC

I LOVE YOU.

I have my own feelings about the Sam/Amelia arc, but everything you said was so thought-provoking. I never thought about the sexual assault angle, and I was "bzuh" until I thought about some of the Lucifer dialogue and--HOLY BRAIN-EATING TRAUMA, BATMAN!

I adore Sam, and I adore you for this post. Dean's loud thrashy emotionalism tends to put Sam in the background a tad.

May I friend you?

pocochina January 24 2013, 01:02:14 UTC

Adding you back now, fellow person of taste!

I don't know if it's a function of having watched the first six and a half seasons in a fairly short amount of time, I guess? Maybe it's not so readily apparent from week to week? But Sam...I don't know. He became really transparent to me about halfway through S3 and I think the show's done a really wonderful job with him.

I loved the Hallucifer arc because of how much it made my skin crawl. But I just don't know how people can look at Sam throughout S7 and not see that he was hanging on by a thread. I'm not sure what people...expected?

Dean's loud thrashy emotionalism tends to put Sam in the background a tad.

Yeah. I grew up in a big Italian family, and so I think I'm pretty desensitized to and used to decoding Dean-type crap, lol.

cuddyclothes January 24 2013, 01:13:49 UTC

Sam's character arc these past few seasons are a marvelous mirror for mental illness. How could anyone think Sam wasn't genuinely reacting to his time in the cage? The season 6 finale when he had to integrate his "selves" and unearth his worst memories. Of COURSE he fell apart! And I completely get why he cut his (huge) losses at the end of S7 and tried to find a new life. My issues about that new life belong in my own LJ.

pocochina January 24 2013, 01:51:32 UTC

Yes! I actually would argue his whole thing from S1-5 was a great metaphor for mental illness, even. His family hates that he can't act "right" and comply with their wishes. He wants to be "normal" even though he has no real frame of reference for what that even means. He doesn't entirely have a grip on what's real and what's not, with John's me-or-your-lyin'-eyes games about monsters. He hides and lies and covers up who he is for Jess. He starts to self-medicate with the demon blood and runs smack against the wall of shaming about how he's weak for needing it BUT ALSO a terrible moral failure for choosing to do something so immoral and unnecessary. (UGH, FAIL MORE, EVERYONE ELSE, she said with characteristic unbiased reasonableness.) And I think S6-7 ran with all that in such a great way as he made that slow progress back from the cage.

nekosammy January 24 2013, 08:55:40 UTC

I am one of those people upset by how Sam's been handled since Season 4. I think for me, it just hurts that Dean gets soooooo much focused attention, and all the side characters, and the guest characters, and the Big Showy Drama About his Sad Hang Nail and what not. It's like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, in nearly every episode. It gets to me, I tell ya, it really gets to me. Even in the latest episode, Charlie only interacts with Dean, and even Dean's talking about Sam is meant to illicit sympathy for Dean giving up Benny. There was an article with a round table of critics, and at the end, they were asked if the brothers were drowning, which one would they save? Only one picked both, and I know she's really a Dean and Castiel fan, and all the rest said Dean. One said, what if Sam is the type of person who doesn't even like music? There's so much about Sam we don't know, because Dean has to be the ONE who likes/loves everything in the universe while we still know nothing about what Sam likes. It's like ( ... )

pocochina January 24 2013, 17:29:15 UTC

But I just...don't see how anything you described about the show speaks to bad writing for Sam? I think it says something about fandom, that so many people prefer not to look past Dean and his bullying and his overt, obvious antics. I expect someone like Sam to try to deal as privately as he can, and for that stress to come through the cracks in ways that are sometimes subtler. And that's what happens. I'd rather have that not be diluted for the sake of people who are missing the point, you know?

Once Cas took Sam's Crazy, Sam's time in the Cage has been buried and unmentioned.But that was episode 17, out of...22? 23? That's most of the season, even after the entire trauma-recovery metaphoric arc of S6. I think that Sam putting it as far out of mind as possible makes sense, as does the massive burnout we saw from him in the last few episodes. I don't think it would have been half so effective if we got clobbered over the head with it in a way that wasn't organic ( ... )

nekosammy January 25 2013, 08:19:48 UTC

I guess maybe we are thinking of characterization in different ways here? I think with the writers/producers/fans, Dean is now this big Wish Fulfillment Character, and Sam is not. And so Sam gets treated differently than Dean on the show and with the fans, in a kind of circle of self-fulfillment. For some people, seeing Dean talk to and bond with, every character that is recurring and the big guest stars, while Sam is all but ignored by them, is rather heart-breaking to see week in and week out. I'm not talking about a character arc necessarily, but about a fully human and sympathetic *fleshing out* of Sam's character for the audience, in equal step with Dean. Why do we know so much about Dean? Because they tell us these things about Dean. I'm not alone in feeling that Sam often feels like he is just there for Dean to React To, like another side character supporting Dean ( ... )

pocochina January 25 2013, 19:25:11 UTC

I thought he would man up and take care of Sam when Sam should have felt free to let go and suffer out loud a little bit. Instead, Dean Suffers out loud. I think it's that there was an overt push to make people feel sorry for Dean, but no similar and equal push for viewers to feel sorry for Sam, and empathize with Sam on that same level.

hm. Yeah, and again (this might be an author-is-dead reading, but w/e) this strikes me as appropriate characterization. Someone with Dean's personality type doesn't react to a sustained struggle with sensitivity and patience. They feel REALLY CONCERNED, OH MY GOD, SO WORRIED when a crisis hits fever pitch that interferes with THEIR life and self-construct as Someone Who Cares. And then as soon as they can ignore it, they distance themselves by setting up a situation where they are ENTITLED to ignore it, because things are so hard for THEM, which puts the onus on the person who is still in crisis to hold their hands as much as possible. So then Dean's spiral becomes, in Dean's POV, ALL SAM'S FAULT ( ... )