In which fandom helps me express my myriad of emotions felt by SPN 5.10
I’ve attempted to write out this post more times than I can count at this point. It’s kinda pathetic how this is now five days after the fact and I still feel like Bambi on ice about it all.
I am sure about one thing: This is precisely the kind of episode I’m glad to have LJ for. The flail and the frustrations alike. The collective work of everyone's reactions this week have been an experience within itself. I’m going to talk about this episode in reference to a number of other people’s reactions around fandom the last couple of days, because they’ve been vast and varied, and a number of them of different sentiments I agreed with. To me, it’s the only way I can succeed in fully capture the myriad of emotions I felt about this episode this week.
SPN - 5.10 - 'Abandon All Hope' w - ben edlund d - phil sgriccia c - jay gruska (I...think?)
To sum in short, there was much to love. And there was much to cause frustration. My anger and rage I thought I’d experience by them killing both of the last two women on the show, wasn’t nearly what I’d predicted. But even that doesn't even begin to cover it all.
The Ellen and Jo parts of this episode brought me to complete and utter devastation, to the point I’m not sure I’ve even experienced on this show (and who ever thought THAT was possible!). And five days later, I can still be reduced to sobs over it. It’s kinda pathetic really. Yet the devastation is paired with this utter sickness I feel every time I remember the scene. The stupidity of the setup. The absolute cluelessness of the boys. Jo’s matter of fact resolve. The boys building the bomb to kill her. The raw realness in the almost silent goodbyes. Perfectly healthy Ellen deciding to sacrifice herself with her daughter. And the eventual uselessness of their death. It’s all absolutely horrific. In terms of the story, bellanut summed my sentiment best: "...in 4 and a half seasons and 3 years of watching I've never really wondered how [the boys] live with themselves until today."
This visceral reaction that this move made for me, and around fandom I believe must count for something. By all accounts of the production team, this was an epically moving and hugely important scene, showcasing a sacrifice that previously has only been bestowed to the Winchesters themselves. And so in this little show’s own fucked up way, these two female hunters were treated like queens. Samantha Harris and Alona Tal and Jensen freakin Ackles just did such a job with this, it’s hard to discount it. The scene was one that stayed completely in tone with the themes of the show, recalling in my mind both Croatoan and ABHL, and drove the narrative forward. Part of that uselessness of their deaths is supposed to be felt for Sam and Dean. I get that. This is their narrative after all, and everything always comes back to them. Both exesequar HERE and apocalypsos HERE capture this sentiment and why this perfectly was in tune with the series quite well.
That’s when I stand within the narrative. But I wear two hats when I watch a show I’m fannish about. One is that emotional, 'totally-inhabiting-in-the-story' hat. The other is stepping outside of the narrative, looking at writers intent. And wearing that hat, I can understand that anger felt by so many which esorlehcar covered so well HERE. I'm actually less angered than I thought I'd be, more just resigned frustration about it all. But I think she makes some very apt points that I don't believe is negated by an emotional response to the text itself.
So I end up with this constant wafting between devastation and frustration, and it’s been hard for me to definitively put my sentiments on this episode into words as a result. I think dotfic explained this feeling of love and understanding but 'unable-to-be-discounted' frustration way more coherently than I'd be able to do HERE.
But in the end, I can voice one very definitive point: I wish we had SEEN the Harvelles over the last three years. Experienced these women and seen some more glimpses of their lives, even a couple minutes here and there, experienced their kickassness over the seasons before they were so quickly shipped out. Heck, I would have even taken a MENTIONING every now and then! They didn’t even mention Ellen and Jo for TWO WHOLE YEARS. If they had done this, it would have (A) had more emotional resonance for the boys (BOTH BOYS, Sam totally got sidelined from this for some inexplicable reason) & viewers living outside of fandom, and (B) eliminated this feeling that Ellen and Jo, their last two reoccurring women characters, were basically USED in this horribly dispensable way, not important enough to be giving character time, only important enough to use for tragic death . As it stands, the emotion of the scene that was created is not discounted but IS somewhat lessened with the idea that I feel manipulated horribly.
But how can I not be mad! Angered! Ranting up a storm!
I was asking myself this for a while. Why wasn't I as mad as I had thought I'd be? But there is one moment, one small little moment, that really saves all of it for me. And it’s in how Jensen Ackles chose to play Dean’s last scene with Jo. There’s this fabulous one second beat where he stares at her hand for a moment too long and when he looks up at her again, the expression on his face is just one filled with a sea of emotions. One of guilt and shame and regret and...respect. What I got from this look was more than just this suddenly forced romantically intended feeling that some have complained about and others have loved. What I got from that was Dean finally seeing her for what she always was, this strong, tough, fearless woman that he was too fuckin stupid to notice, care, or appreciate until the moment she’s willing to put her finger on a detonator two minutes before her death. At that moment I heard Ghost!Meg’s voice repeating in his head:
"Because all you were thinking about [these last three years] was your family, your revenge, and your demons, [and you used these women without a second thought and promptly forgot about them as soon as your own shit got too much to deal with]".
I saw 414 replaying in his head, about how he hadn’t given a damn the last time he saw her two years ago, and hadn‘t thought to see how they were doing until they inexplicably stumbled upon them two years later on a hunt, and found out they were still ALIVE. And how much of a fuckin jackass he’d been that the only part of her that’d ever caught his eye was her ASS. It saved the whole goddamn scene for me. Heck, I think it saved the whole episode and the series' horrific treatment of the Harvelles! Because in one moment, it built INTO THE STORY the writers own uncaring nature about these two characters, dropping them like a hat as soon as Jo as a love interest didn‘t work out like they‘d planned, and never even mentioning them for two years and transferred this blame to Sam and Dean themselves. And in that way, because I get that from that look every time I watch it, is why I believe this does end up working for me. longsufferingly wrote this gorgeous little coda fic right after the episode that perfectly captures the rest of what I got out of Dean’s goodbye scene with Jo. Way to save an episode without a word, Ackles!
As for the episode itself, that’s another story entirely. While the broad strokes might have worked, I've got no shame in saying that I found this script to be an absolute MESS. sockkpuppett had the best description for it: “all this ep was, was a big bunch of incomplete sentences”. The scene to scene jumps were ridiculously all over the place, and had me jarred from one minute to the next with it all. Sam and Dean were hardly in it, and save maybe one minute, acted mostly like strangers the whole episode. Sam himself was mostly given NOTHING to do, and acted as window dressing. Cas was basically in the episode for the whole point of beaming Dean and Sam out of the death-ridden town just in the nick of time. It reeks of a script that was WAYYY too long, and was pared down considerably, and suffered horribly as a result. The treatment of Jo and Ellen though, I’ll be honest, that I had prepared myself all morning for much worse treatment, so the fact that they got to be TOTALLY KICKASS AND AWESOME before they died, was super amazing and definitely the high point of the episode. But I feel like it shouldn’t be praised simply because it wasn’t as horribly played as it could have been.
And it doesn’t discount that the setup to the hellhounds just BLEEDS stupidity on the part of the writers. We get absolutely NO reason as to why Jo and Ellen were called in by the boys in need of their help. Crowley basically is like, yea, take the Colt, kill the Devil, and they’re all like, OKAY SURE, LAST NIGHT OF OUR LIVES! UM, WHAT?? Mostly I love just how much stock EVERYONE puts in being able to kill Lucifer with the COLT. Crowley, CAS, SHOULDN’T CAS KNOW?? I mean, you’d think Jo and Ellen would go, um, how are we sure this will kill the devil?
And then we get to them in town, and Meg appears with hellhounds and, this drives me friggin batshat. Because DEAN HAS THE FRIGGIN COLT! He has two options! A) Let her take them to the very Devil they came into town to find and kill, or B) Kill her with the damn Colt! Instead, he says, ‘We don’t do easy’, shoots the friggin hellhound to make them mad and RUNS? So that he falls, Jo has to save his ass, and then gets mortally wounded?! AND THEN he tells Sam ‘we’ve got to take our shot no matter what’? NOT BEFORE WHEN YOU WANTED TO TAKE THE HARD WAY OUT JUST BECAUSE?!?!
SEE THE STUPID? IT BLEEEEDSSSS.
Of course, I’m typing this now to finally vent, so I can shelf this perpetual internal rant. Because a gorgeous meta and picspam like smilia02 did HERE still has the capacity to make me retrospectively love the parts we got anyway. And I’ve decided that THAT’S the episode I want to love and enjoy. The episode who’s allusions to Croatoan and ABHL and reminders of growth of Jo in the last three years from ‘No Exit’ to now, make me SOB like a BUFFOON, and pulls strings in my heart I didn’t even know I had. An accomplishment in a half, considering the blender this show has already put my heart through in the last three years. I thought there was no pieces of my heart this show hadn’t hurt yet, but apparently it found them. That fact alone, despite all the gender fail and writing fail and bleeding stupidity, makes this episode success.
Nevertheless, in the overwhelming pattern this show has created over the years, especially after the disposable way Bela and Pamela before this were used, the show shutting its doors on its last reoccurring female characters just plain hurts. I can remember as far back as Wendigo and the appearance of Hayley, that I hoped for at least one good female reoccurring role in this show. And we've gotten glimpses of them, we have. But out of almost a hundred episodes now, they are pathetically few and far between, and now, there are none left. (Well, Tamera's still around somewhere, but what are the odds we'll ever see her again?) So, THIS comment by dotfic:
"On Supernatural, there are strong, tough women, but we never get to keep them."
...perhaps sums up best what is most frustrating about the whole experience. As I said in response, I just want to spend hiatus celebrating these women. These strong kickass women that TPTB have been too stupid to see they were worth keeping around.
So I’m glad to see people around fandom have been moved to do so with fic-writing the last couple days while I’ve been wallowing in my Sony Vegas. I haven’t gotten to look at them all just yet but I’ve been accumulating a list, and I'll be adding to it as I see them. Some missing scenes and codas of remembrance of Ellen and Jo that have been written the last couple days:
+ ‘Your Ears Tuned To The Roar‘ [Jo, Ellen] by musesfool - In which Jo grows up.
+ ’Five Times the Harvelles and the Winchesters (Never) Hunted Together‘ by dotfic - fixing what canon never gave us, wonderfully vivid and even at times lighthearted moments between 5.04 and 5.10
+ 'Rust & Lights' - For once it's Castiel urging Dean to release his iron grip on his feelings
+ ’…Ye Who Enter Here‘ by adrenaline - Dean and Sam return to Bobby’s and they all grapple with the worthlessness of it all
+ ’The Next…Everything‘ [Ellen] - Dying isn‘t the end of it. - A simple drabble of what comes after, but a neat thought, nonetheless.
+ ’Are We There Yet?’ by sockkiah - Ellen, Jo, and Cas’s roadtrip to Carthage.
+ ’Over A Few Drinks‘ - How the drinking game between Jo, Ellen, and Cas erupted
+ ’Never Have I Ever‘ - Another glimpse on the drinking game, and actually there’s a WHOLE comment!fic post going on for these missing drinking scenes HERE
+ ’We‘ll Sing The Songs and Name the Names‘by sessile29 - Dean and Cas remember Ellen and Jo.
ETA:
Because I'm a sucker for cheesy 'day-after-eps-of-trauma' youtube tributes...
HARVELLE TRIBUTE VIDLETS
- Lost Along The Way
- To Let Go
- Winter Song (Is Love Alive) - probably my favorite of the three, the b/w with this source and this song is just bone-chillingly apt.
If you have found any others, I’d love to hear about them.
And so I’m holding myself to this. This vid I started on the fly Thursday morning is TOTALLY getting finished before the end of winter hiatus. Stop laughing, I’M SERIOUS. Besides vidding kickass women source is totally therapeutic, even if it's totally depressing how little of it there is.
Any chance anyone might want to gab about tightening a vid storyboard structure this week? I’m totally fixated on this meta slant for it, but I think I’d benefit by talking it through with someone before I go any further with it than I already have. I’ve got only a very very rough first draft laid and a loose narrative structure at the moment, but I’ve got weeks of paring and tweeking and tightening ahead of me. I always hate this part. :/
I am sure about one thing: This is precisely the kind of episode I’m glad to have LJ for. The flail and the frustrations alike. The collective work of everyone's reactions this week have been an experience within itself. I’m going to talk about this episode in reference to a number of other people’s reactions around fandom the last couple of days, because they’ve been vast and varied, and a number of them of different sentiments I agreed with. To me, it’s the only way I can succeed in fully capture the myriad of emotions I felt about this episode this week.
SPN - 5.10 - 'Abandon All Hope' w - ben edlund d - phil sgriccia c - jay gruska (I...think?)
To sum in short, there was much to love. And there was much to cause frustration. My anger and rage I thought I’d experience by them killing both of the last two women on the show, wasn’t nearly what I’d predicted. But even that doesn't even begin to cover it all.
The Ellen and Jo parts of this episode brought me to complete and utter devastation, to the point I’m not sure I’ve even experienced on this show (and who ever thought THAT was possible!). And five days later, I can still be reduced to sobs over it. It’s kinda pathetic really. Yet the devastation is paired with this utter sickness I feel every time I remember the scene. The stupidity of the setup. The absolute cluelessness of the boys. Jo’s matter of fact resolve. The boys building the bomb to kill her. The raw realness in the almost silent goodbyes. Perfectly healthy Ellen deciding to sacrifice herself with her daughter. And the eventual uselessness of their death. It’s all absolutely horrific. In terms of the story, bellanut summed my sentiment best: "...in 4 and a half seasons and 3 years of watching I've never really wondered how [the boys] live with themselves until today."
This visceral reaction that this move made for me, and around fandom I believe must count for something. By all accounts of the production team, this was an epically moving and hugely important scene, showcasing a sacrifice that previously has only been bestowed to the Winchesters themselves. And so in this little show’s own fucked up way, these two female hunters were treated like queens. Samantha Harris and Alona Tal and Jensen freakin Ackles just did such a job with this, it’s hard to discount it. The scene was one that stayed completely in tone with the themes of the show, recalling in my mind both Croatoan and ABHL, and drove the narrative forward. Part of that uselessness of their deaths is supposed to be felt for Sam and Dean. I get that. This is their narrative after all, and everything always comes back to them. Both exesequar HERE and apocalypsos HERE capture this sentiment and why this perfectly was in tune with the series quite well.
That’s when I stand within the narrative. But I wear two hats when I watch a show I’m fannish about. One is that emotional, 'totally-inhabiting-in-the-story' hat. The other is stepping outside of the narrative, looking at writers intent. And wearing that hat, I can understand that anger felt by so many which esorlehcar covered so well HERE. I'm actually less angered than I thought I'd be, more just resigned frustration about it all. But I think she makes some very apt points that I don't believe is negated by an emotional response to the text itself.
So I end up with this constant wafting between devastation and frustration, and it’s been hard for me to definitively put my sentiments on this episode into words as a result. I think dotfic explained this feeling of love and understanding but 'unable-to-be-discounted' frustration way more coherently than I'd be able to do HERE.
But in the end, I can voice one very definitive point: I wish we had SEEN the Harvelles over the last three years. Experienced these women and seen some more glimpses of their lives, even a couple minutes here and there, experienced their kickassness over the seasons before they were so quickly shipped out. Heck, I would have even taken a MENTIONING every now and then! They didn’t even mention Ellen and Jo for TWO WHOLE YEARS. If they had done this, it would have (A) had more emotional resonance for the boys (BOTH BOYS, Sam totally got sidelined from this for some inexplicable reason) & viewers living outside of fandom, and (B) eliminated this feeling that Ellen and Jo, their last two reoccurring women characters, were basically USED in this horribly dispensable way, not important enough to be giving character time, only important enough to use for tragic death . As it stands, the emotion of the scene that was created is not discounted but IS somewhat lessened with the idea that I feel manipulated horribly.
But how can I not be mad! Angered! Ranting up a storm!
I was asking myself this for a while. Why wasn't I as mad as I had thought I'd be? But there is one moment, one small little moment, that really saves all of it for me. And it’s in how Jensen Ackles chose to play Dean’s last scene with Jo. There’s this fabulous one second beat where he stares at her hand for a moment too long and when he looks up at her again, the expression on his face is just one filled with a sea of emotions. One of guilt and shame and regret and...respect. What I got from this look was more than just this suddenly forced romantically intended feeling that some have complained about and others have loved. What I got from that was Dean finally seeing her for what she always was, this strong, tough, fearless woman that he was too fuckin stupid to notice, care, or appreciate until the moment she’s willing to put her finger on a detonator two minutes before her death. At that moment I heard Ghost!Meg’s voice repeating in his head:
"Because all you were thinking about [these last three years] was your family, your revenge, and your demons, [and you used these women without a second thought and promptly forgot about them as soon as your own shit got too much to deal with]".
I saw 414 replaying in his head, about how he hadn’t given a damn the last time he saw her two years ago, and hadn‘t thought to see how they were doing until they inexplicably stumbled upon them two years later on a hunt, and found out they were still ALIVE. And how much of a fuckin jackass he’d been that the only part of her that’d ever caught his eye was her ASS. It saved the whole goddamn scene for me. Heck, I think it saved the whole episode and the series' horrific treatment of the Harvelles! Because in one moment, it built INTO THE STORY the writers own uncaring nature about these two characters, dropping them like a hat as soon as Jo as a love interest didn‘t work out like they‘d planned, and never even mentioning them for two years and transferred this blame to Sam and Dean themselves. And in that way, because I get that from that look every time I watch it, is why I believe this does end up working for me. longsufferingly wrote this gorgeous little coda fic right after the episode that perfectly captures the rest of what I got out of Dean’s goodbye scene with Jo. Way to save an episode without a word, Ackles!
As for the episode itself, that’s another story entirely. While the broad strokes might have worked, I've got no shame in saying that I found this script to be an absolute MESS. sockkpuppett had the best description for it: “all this ep was, was a big bunch of incomplete sentences”. The scene to scene jumps were ridiculously all over the place, and had me jarred from one minute to the next with it all. Sam and Dean were hardly in it, and save maybe one minute, acted mostly like strangers the whole episode. Sam himself was mostly given NOTHING to do, and acted as window dressing. Cas was basically in the episode for the whole point of beaming Dean and Sam out of the death-ridden town just in the nick of time. It reeks of a script that was WAYYY too long, and was pared down considerably, and suffered horribly as a result. The treatment of Jo and Ellen though, I’ll be honest, that I had prepared myself all morning for much worse treatment, so the fact that they got to be TOTALLY KICKASS AND AWESOME before they died, was super amazing and definitely the high point of the episode. But I feel like it shouldn’t be praised simply because it wasn’t as horribly played as it could have been.
And it doesn’t discount that the setup to the hellhounds just BLEEDS stupidity on the part of the writers. We get absolutely NO reason as to why Jo and Ellen were called in by the boys in need of their help. Crowley basically is like, yea, take the Colt, kill the Devil, and they’re all like, OKAY SURE, LAST NIGHT OF OUR LIVES! UM, WHAT?? Mostly I love just how much stock EVERYONE puts in being able to kill Lucifer with the COLT. Crowley, CAS, SHOULDN’T CAS KNOW?? I mean, you’d think Jo and Ellen would go, um, how are we sure this will kill the devil?
And then we get to them in town, and Meg appears with hellhounds and, this drives me friggin batshat. Because DEAN HAS THE FRIGGIN COLT! He has two options! A) Let her take them to the very Devil they came into town to find and kill, or B) Kill her with the damn Colt! Instead, he says, ‘We don’t do easy’, shoots the friggin hellhound to make them mad and RUNS? So that he falls, Jo has to save his ass, and then gets mortally wounded?! AND THEN he tells Sam ‘we’ve got to take our shot no matter what’? NOT BEFORE WHEN YOU WANTED TO TAKE THE HARD WAY OUT JUST BECAUSE?!?!
SEE THE STUPID? IT BLEEEEDSSSS.
Of course, I’m typing this now to finally vent, so I can shelf this perpetual internal rant. Because a gorgeous meta and picspam like smilia02 did HERE still has the capacity to make me retrospectively love the parts we got anyway. And I’ve decided that THAT’S the episode I want to love and enjoy. The episode who’s allusions to Croatoan and ABHL and reminders of growth of Jo in the last three years from ‘No Exit’ to now, make me SOB like a BUFFOON, and pulls strings in my heart I didn’t even know I had. An accomplishment in a half, considering the blender this show has already put my heart through in the last three years. I thought there was no pieces of my heart this show hadn’t hurt yet, but apparently it found them. That fact alone, despite all the gender fail and writing fail and bleeding stupidity, makes this episode success.
Nevertheless, in the overwhelming pattern this show has created over the years, especially after the disposable way Bela and Pamela before this were used, the show shutting its doors on its last reoccurring female characters just plain hurts. I can remember as far back as Wendigo and the appearance of Hayley, that I hoped for at least one good female reoccurring role in this show. And we've gotten glimpses of them, we have. But out of almost a hundred episodes now, they are pathetically few and far between, and now, there are none left. (Well, Tamera's still around somewhere, but what are the odds we'll ever see her again?) So, THIS comment by dotfic:
"On Supernatural, there are strong, tough women, but we never get to keep them."
...perhaps sums up best what is most frustrating about the whole experience. As I said in response, I just want to spend hiatus celebrating these women. These strong kickass women that TPTB have been too stupid to see they were worth keeping around.
So I’m glad to see people around fandom have been moved to do so with fic-writing the last couple days while I’ve been wallowing in my Sony Vegas. I haven’t gotten to look at them all just yet but I’ve been accumulating a list, and I'll be adding to it as I see them. Some missing scenes and codas of remembrance of Ellen and Jo that have been written the last couple days:
+ ‘Your Ears Tuned To The Roar‘ [Jo, Ellen] by musesfool - In which Jo grows up.
+ ’Five Times the Harvelles and the Winchesters (Never) Hunted Together‘ by dotfic - fixing what canon never gave us, wonderfully vivid and even at times lighthearted moments between 5.04 and 5.10
+ 'Rust & Lights' - For once it's Castiel urging Dean to release his iron grip on his feelings
+ ’…Ye Who Enter Here‘ by adrenaline - Dean and Sam return to Bobby’s and they all grapple with the worthlessness of it all
+ ’The Next…Everything‘ [Ellen] - Dying isn‘t the end of it. - A simple drabble of what comes after, but a neat thought, nonetheless.
+ ’Are We There Yet?’ by sockkiah - Ellen, Jo, and Cas’s roadtrip to Carthage.
+ ’Over A Few Drinks‘ - How the drinking game between Jo, Ellen, and Cas erupted
+ ’Never Have I Ever‘ - Another glimpse on the drinking game, and actually there’s a WHOLE comment!fic post going on for these missing drinking scenes HERE
+ ’We‘ll Sing The Songs and Name the Names‘by sessile29 - Dean and Cas remember Ellen and Jo.
ETA:
Because I'm a sucker for cheesy 'day-after-eps-of-trauma' youtube tributes...
HARVELLE TRIBUTE VIDLETS
- Lost Along The Way
- To Let Go
- Winter Song (Is Love Alive) - probably my favorite of the three, the b/w with this source and this song is just bone-chillingly apt.
If you have found any others, I’d love to hear about them.
And so I’m holding myself to this. This vid I started on the fly Thursday morning is TOTALLY getting finished before the end of winter hiatus. Stop laughing, I’M SERIOUS. Besides vidding kickass women source is totally therapeutic, even if it's totally depressing how little of it there is.
Any chance anyone might want to gab about tightening a vid storyboard structure this week? I’m totally fixated on this meta slant for it, but I think I’d benefit by talking it through with someone before I go any further with it than I already have. I’ve got only a very very rough first draft laid and a loose narrative structure at the moment, but I’ve got weeks of paring and tweeking and tightening ahead of me. I always hate this part. :/