SPN: a poll (post-Devil's Trap v.2)

[sargraf]

Manon, I hope you've noticed that my last few posts have been utterly emotion-free. ;) I told you I could do it! And now, I'll go back to my regularly scheduled program... :P

Comments

[lemmealone]

This is purely a comment on the poll for now, because I knw reading your ramble is going to make it even more difficult to pick just one answer. :)

For the questions about Sam/Self-Knowledge and Dean/Morality I really, honestly could not choose just one option. The characters (and Kripke's handling of them) do have their flaws, but they are still multi-layered and difficult to pin down in places. A big part of this is the acting, yeah, but I also suspect that Kripke's anecdotal five year plan is causing the writing of the characters to be... they're trying not to show everything at once and they're far from omnipotent narrators because the characters are still very organic in re. audience response and especially the way the actors are handling the. Kripke even said that Dean's character evolved due to Jensen's unexpectedly nuanced performance.

The writers just don't know the characters all that well just yet, is what I'm trying to say. So sometimes there are moments when their behaviour is jarringly out of place, because on many levels WWDD or WWSD are still hypothetical questions.

That said:

Sam seems to be a combination of Fromm, Austen and Rath. Because his ideals and what he wants out of life are, while perfectly understandable and I say good luck to him, selfish within the context of the show - qualified by time frame. To begin with, he is all about the revenge to the point where he is unwilling to help strangers. Which makes him just like the rest of us, but he's held up against the pinnacle of Dean, who makes fucking Mother Theresa look selfish. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there's Devil's Trap and the Rath quote. In between DT and the pilot, Sam is layer upon layer of everything in between Me and My Family, and I am not going to hijack your journal to explore that when I can sit down and do it more coherently in my own. :)

Dean... you play with Dean way more efficiently than I ever could! I'll leave him alone for a bit. *g*

[dotfic]

Kripke's anecdotal five year plan

Hi, does this mean there's word going around that Kripke has a five year plan? Because that's one of my hopes for this show, that they've chosen a time frame, with a beginning, middle, and they know exactly how and where it's going to end (nervous former X-Phile here...fears of a MOTW series getting bogged down in its own complex mythology...eek).

[lemmealone]

Kripke has said in an interview that he knows how the first season will end, the second season, etc right up to the fifth season. Don't ask me where, because I rather stupidly didn't save the article. :)

But he does seem to have an overriding plan. Or least he claims to...

[dotfic]

Oh, yay! Well, at least he's going to TRY, and he knows how each season ends.

[sargraf]

Kripke's anecdotal five year plan is causing the writing of the characters to be... they're trying not to show everything at once and they're far from omnipotent narrators because the characters are still very organic in re. audience response and especially the way the actors are handling the.

That's a very good point. I don't know how to feel about it, really. On the one hand, it's sort of nice to know that we may have that much influence over the characters. On the other hand... as a writer myself (not a published one; just a passionate one :)), my characters may be organic in their own right, but I would never bend or adjust them according to which way the wind blew, so to speak. If the readers didn't care for a decision one of my characters made or felt he or she should be softer/harder/happier/sadder, I wouldn't turn that character around. If one of them was not the type to break down nearly unprovoked (Dean, Shadow) or if another had an enormous amount to answer for (John), I wouldn't force them into that position or have the issues so lightly and easily apologized for, just so that the readers can have that Scene. You know?

But you're absolutely right. Kripke said it himself. Who knows how much of it he'd intended when he first created the characters. He probably intended for Dean to be not much more than a springboard for deeper, sweeter Sam. But Jensen was unintentionally deep...? Good for him, but it's both thrilling and frightening to ponder how flexible his characterization could be...

I definitely think that Sam's selfishness has been too pronounced. Sam girls always get on my case for saying that, but they don't seem to understand: this isn't a criticism of his character, it's a criticism of how he's written. Like X-Treme Horndog Woobie Dean in Shadow (WTF, Kripke?). And like you say, they've built Dean's self-sacrificing ways up to a point where he makes everyone else look selfish by contrast. He's not without flaws, but Kripke calls him on the same ones all the time; ditto, Sam. So they never truly evolve. It's like Kripke will only handle one major flaw at once. Selfishness for Sam. Weakness for Dean. *sigh* It's frustrating, because we see the other layers but there hardly if ever addressed or expanded. If he's got a 5-year plan, that's 5 big issues per guy, given the same heavy-handed treatment. (Or... well, so I hope, if that's his MO. I hope it's not going to be 5 years of the same flaws. Ugh.)

Dean... you play with Dean way more efficiently than I ever could!

Ooooh! And you haven't even seen how I dream about him. Hee! ;)