Stumbling towards canonisation: the Project.

[whit_merule]

I tried to reflect on season seven generally. I honestly did. But the thing is? I don't feel like I've got a handle on it.

I don't feel like I've followed the emotional arc of any character since season 5. And I've tried, honestly I have. I want to feel that I can trust the writers with their own characters (and forget that I never really connected

Comments

[auroramama]

Television canon is a strange substance. Nobody gets their own way entirely, and collaboration, agglomeration, and emendation happen live under a level of time pressure I don't associate with literature of any era. Random scenes, moments, and lines of dialogue disappear, are brought back, and are cut at the last minute. Chrétien de Troyes didn't have notes from a network telling him not to make the reader think, though now I wonder what forces may have acted in a similar direction

[whit_merule]

Interesting! I would disagree entirely that no other period of literature has that sort of time pressure and emendation and competing influences and collaboration and so on. I'd say entirely the opposite - that the author-centric version, the abstract idea of the artist as the definitive and absolute owner of the work, and the idea of the work as a finite and complete thing, are very modern and rather artificial constructs, which have only applied over the last couple of centuries and are mostly due to the dominance of the novel as our idea of 'literature'. Pretty much every other literary form that I can think of over the centuries - including the last couple - is so much a product of debate and competing influences and ongoing conversations between and across genres, belongs to many individuals, exists in many different forms, responds to many different things (including different needs for funding and patronage, different political/cultural contexts), may be revised frequently throughout the author's lifetime to answer several

[whit_merule]

And then, of course, you have the whole thing where he probably never wrote any of it down himself, so everyone who did was writing their own version of it anyway. :) I've seen literary scholars insist on, for example, Hamlet actors doing That Speech nice and fast without meaningful pauses on the grounds that the early printed versions of the play don't have much punctuation in them, so clearly Shakespeare wanted it read fast, which completely ignores the context of both composition (plays are VERY collaborative, even nowadays when we think the author is a sacred idea) and of printing (Shakespeare was dead by then, it was just his friends handing a bunch of much-revised papers to a printer, and typesetters had a lot of discretion when it came to layout and frequently change things like spelling, punctuation, word choice, and even change verse to prose in the interests of fitting things onto a page

[morganlucas41]

Are you me? Because I feel almost exactly the same way. I caught up on the show in the middle of S6, too, and I also loved the story arc through S5. And since then, it has been disjointed. I also really WANT to love the show, and it's not that I don't really - there are episodes that are really great. But on the whole, I just don't quite get where the show is going anymore, and I miss the big way that the mystery unfolded over the first five seasons. I loved that each season had a goal that felt personal and important at the same time, and how all those goals fit in together to tell the overall story. I haven't gotten that sense from S6 or S7 at all

[whit_merule]

I do not think I am you but I am not sure because I know I am me and if I am you then you are me and me is me and... um.

Moving on.

To be honest, while I enjoyed the first three seasons they didn't grab me - not until Castiel turned up. Then the way seasons 4 and 5 played out made a far better story of the whole for me, and the earlier seasons became easier to appreciate. So maybe we'll get something from Ben Edlund that will pull seasons 6 and 7 together...

likeCasandDeanworkingouttheirissuesandhavingsnuggles

And, yes. Season 7 does feel rather impersonal. The only personal relevance the Leviathans have is as a symbol of Castiel's failure (or of Dean and Sam's failure to reach out earlier and stop him, but the show doesn't go there much), and honestly, that's rather tenuous. Lucifer had that relevance for Sam, btu he had a hell of a lot more, and everything about that arc meant to much to them on so many levels.

Clearly the only way to solve this is to bring back Michael and Gabriel so they can slay the Leviathans together

[etoile444]

Two things you said stand out: #1 yes, the story had so much meaning when it was a parallel of daddy/family issues and brotherly love. Season 4 & 5 grabbed hold of all that Sam and Dean experienced and made it heavenly.

And also, that all old fiction is fanfiction in a way due to books being hand copied. Never thought of it that way, but wow, and yes!

In season 4 & 5 I loved to discuss the show and analyze it. I started to find that hard to do in season 6, and impossible at times in season 7. Perhaps the show outdid itself and created something so incredible in season 1-5 that it could not sustain it. I don't know. But it's quite ordinary now and sometimes, I can't even remember what the previous episode was about.

[whit_merule]

Yes, well, given how much of fictional literature from 1100-1500 centred around either Arthuriana (or other very similar cycles of characters and premises and values) or around saints' lives (and those get even more repetitive and fantastical than Arthuriana!) there's certainly a hell of a lot of derivative stuff, which is actually very similar to the way fandom works. Here's this set of characters, here's this broad set of situations which are accepted as 'canon' (we know these main points in their lives happened), now let's all run away and make our own interpretations / version, possibly stealing bits from - er, I mean paying tribute to - this other really good version of something else that I saw last week

[etoile444]

I am currently watching the story in order to see if it continues after season five or flails. I am at 4.07 currently. We will see how it goes.

[borgmama1of5]

Fascinating reading! I will be looking for more of your thoughts and others' comments!

[whit_merule]

Glad it provoked thought! :)

[lady_drace]

It's actually a good point you're presenting. I didn't get into the show until late season 6 and I also zoomed through all the earlier seasons in one go (more or less) just in time for the season 7 upstart. And I was utterly unimpressed with most of it. But it is in fact possible that part of my detachment to the plots could be connected to my lack of overview. Maybe I should sit down and watch the whole season in a short time too, just to see if it makes more sense like that.

That said, I am definitely most into the seasons with Castiel, so season 7s lack of Cas (and the angels in general) was a major downer. And like you, the Leviathans were utterly uninteresting to me. My fix-it fic basically explains what I would have wanted the levis to be.

In conclusion, I think I'll join the choir: Can we have the angels and demons back, please? ktxbai.

[whit_merule]

My 'what I want the Leviathans to be' is basically 'creatures that can only be killed by Michael and Gabriel working together', so, essentially, it's just a I REJECT UR VILLAINZ, BRING BACK MAH ANGELS. :) I thought more could have been done with Crowley, but it feels like they're gearing up to use him more next season anyway, and I rather liked (frmo a character perspective) that he was choosing to call off the demons to give Dean and Sam a head start against The Villains Who Do Not Appreciate Baby Uvula Cupcakes (poor Crowley, you know he wore his best frilly apron to make those).

I definitely think there's something to be said for watching/reading a story continuously to pick up on subtler thematic resonances. And of course, when it's an episodic genre like television, those themes are often what carries the overall plot, for obvious reasons. I just feel that, at least from my perspective, in these last two seasons they had to do too much work - there wasn't enough drive in the plot plot to sustain my interest

[lady_drace]

(poor Crowley, you know he wore his best frilly apron to make those). Totally. My headcanon is that he unwinds by baking. *nods* (Which fits nicely with the times I feel like shipping him with Gabriel. Yes. Multishipping FTW!)

As for Eve, I tend to forget about her. I only ever really remember her when I get caught up pondering about the dragons. I'm into dragons in a big way and I wouldn't mind seeing them again on the show.