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SPN: Dream a Little Dream
For the record? If SPN were to become The Bobby Singer Show, I would totally watch that. Just sayin'. Except it would need more Ellen.
Okay, now, about the rest ...
It is very ironic that this episode happened to air right on the heels of this discussion I was having with a friend about mysogyny in the show. I really don't have the issues with mysogyny that a lot of SPN fans do. It's kind of like the problems that some people have with colonialism in SGA. I can see it; I'm just not really bothered by it. That's the sort of thing that I feel compelled to rectify in fic, but not to stress about in the show, if that makes any sense -- a known flaw, but one that I can cheerfully ignore most of the time.
... but, but ... the awful juxtaposition of just having been talking about it, and thinking about it, and then watching this episode ...! It was just so distracting! I adore Bobby and was thrilled to get a Bobby-centric episode, but ... "She went rabid and I had to stab her to death a zillion times"?! Writers, WTF? I mean, yes, angst, but, but ... where do your minds go, to come up with this sort of thing, over and over again?
And it wasn't just that. I wandered around for a little while trying to organize my thoughts, because ... it's not that I hated the episode -- in fact, I liked parts of it very much. But I kept wanting to laugh when I'd think about it, because so much of it was like a self-parody -- a parade of SPN cliches. So Bobby, like just every other male character on the show, is motivated by the horrible, brutal death of a woman in his past. So Dean really is the gigantic woobie with massive self-esteem issues that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derry667 and I kept insisting he wasn't last season. And, uh .... Sam beat a guy to death with a baseball bat and, as with ripping Gordon's head off a couple of episodes ago, seems awfully okay with it.
There are a lot of really neat bits to meta about in the episode (Dean's recurring fantasy of a perfect suburban life; BOBBY!; Sam's wet dream about Bella and trying to cover up his crotch {hee!}; Dean accepting that he doesn't want to die, and the look on Sam's face; DID I MENTION BOBBY?) but ... I keep getting hung up on the "Uh ... wait ... what?" aspects. It's like the episode was produced by some kind of random SPN script generator, and while parts of it were really, really fun, the episode as a whole was sort of one big basket of WTF?
Okay, now, about the rest ...
It is very ironic that this episode happened to air right on the heels of this discussion I was having with a friend about mysogyny in the show. I really don't have the issues with mysogyny that a lot of SPN fans do. It's kind of like the problems that some people have with colonialism in SGA. I can see it; I'm just not really bothered by it. That's the sort of thing that I feel compelled to rectify in fic, but not to stress about in the show, if that makes any sense -- a known flaw, but one that I can cheerfully ignore most of the time.
... but, but ... the awful juxtaposition of just having been talking about it, and thinking about it, and then watching this episode ...! It was just so distracting! I adore Bobby and was thrilled to get a Bobby-centric episode, but ... "She went rabid and I had to stab her to death a zillion times"?! Writers, WTF? I mean, yes, angst, but, but ... where do your minds go, to come up with this sort of thing, over and over again?
And it wasn't just that. I wandered around for a little while trying to organize my thoughts, because ... it's not that I hated the episode -- in fact, I liked parts of it very much. But I kept wanting to laugh when I'd think about it, because so much of it was like a self-parody -- a parade of SPN cliches. So Bobby, like just every other male character on the show, is motivated by the horrible, brutal death of a woman in his past. So Dean really is the gigantic woobie with massive self-esteem issues that
derry667 and I kept insisting he wasn't last season. And, uh .... Sam beat a guy to death with a baseball bat and, as with ripping Gordon's head off a couple of episodes ago, seems awfully okay with it.There are a lot of really neat bits to meta about in the episode (Dean's recurring fantasy of a perfect suburban life; BOBBY!; Sam's wet dream about Bella and trying to cover up his crotch {hee!}; Dean accepting that he doesn't want to die, and the look on Sam's face; DID I MENTION BOBBY?) but ... I keep getting hung up on the "Uh ... wait ... what?" aspects. It's like the episode was produced by some kind of random SPN script generator, and while parts of it were really, really fun, the episode as a whole was sort of one big basket of WTF?
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You should take a look at this thread of discussion that I think has another view of things that a lot of threads don't seem about this whole thing.
Not saying I agree whole heartedly, but its a new spin on some things out there.
http://janissa11.livejournal.com/357713.html#cutid1
To me the eppy felt like it was written by one screen writer then half way through picked up by another. It was parts Dream scape and um...other things.
It has wonderful moments and other times I was left scathing my head. I liked the fact that Dean expressed some things simmering under the surface but I didn't take his lashing out as his exact thoughts about his view of life and family.
I love Bobby and although I don't dislike Bella and Ruby to the point other fans do..I hope the trend that they come to the brother's rescue ends soon, they've been fine on their own for a while. I hope Bella stealing the colt was a sigh of how that path will end.
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It does make sense that Dean might have swung too far the other way -- that he's gone from hero-worship to pure resentment. But, if you buy that, then it makes Dean look awfully petty, doesn't it? Because this isn't a situation where there's some kind of demon or entity feeding him misinformation. Unlike, say, the Doppelganger episode of SGA, or Dean's various interactions with demons (where I've *always* believed that they're drawing more heavily on his insecurities than Dean himself does), everything in this dream comes out of Dean's psyche. This makes me a lot more likely to take what it tells him at face value, or at least something close to face value -- it may not be the whole truth, but I didn't get the feeling from the episode that it was really that much of a distortion, either.
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I never replied to that link, I just found the spin to be interesting and as you know, I try to look at other ppl's thoughts because it helps me view the episode outside of my own little box. This eppy in particular has been loved and hated across the board.
As far as Dean's statement about Bobby being like a dad...that was out of left field..since when? I mean it seems like they've only been in constant contact for the last two years and before then?
Though maybe Dean means "a real father" perhaps versus what John was to him? What a father should be?
Not sure.
I think Dean has two extreme viewpoints of his dad..he LOVES his dad, do anything for John...would follow him down a dark hole if John just said so...but its possible to have a resentment deep down too I think.
Dean's screwed up we all know that...lol
Dean VS Demon Dean was just another form of extremeness--so we got what felt like a strong sense of resentment when its might just be underlaying everything else.
I agree that the demons play with Dean's inscecurities, its his weak spot other then Sam. Hopefully we'll get a clearer picture soon.
Bobbeh!
Re: Bobbeh!
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The misogyny of this show of late has really been disturbing me, and I'm not usually greatly bothered by such, so, yeah. Didn't think this was as bad as say last week's (man cheats on wife with other woman; wife dies gruesomely, other woman dies gruesomely, man lives. Umm?) but, yeah. Bobby's backstory...heh. Random SPN cliche generator, as you say. The hell, people, it doesn't always have to be a wife or a mother. How about a daughter? mix it up! Or, wait, I know, a BROTHER, considering the whole show is themed around that kind of male-male bond?
(otoh I so thought Bela was going to be revealed as Bobby's SEKRIT LOVECHILD ZOMG! so her making off with the Colt surprised me in a good way.)
ETA: And tell me we weren't alone giggling "Doppelganger!" Dean started talking to himself and
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Kinda funny I read this now, I made a joke on the Supernatural message board I run about Bela being Bobby's daughter and a couple of my members yelled at me for it :D
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Heh, yeah, ditto ... you *know* it's gotten bad when it's bothering ME!
... the thought that Bela might be related to Bobby hadn't even occurred to me. I thought they'd had a one-night stand and he didn't really remember her, hence his weird reaction.
Doppelganger! Yes! Like Naye and I were talking about below, though, Doppelganger was just so much more satisfying as an episode. It took apart the characters' insecurities without shining a light into every dark place in their psyches ... and without outright stating much of anything, either! Teyla's dream in particular read like a "real" dream and provided oodles of character-analysis fodder. There's not much to analyze when they tell you everything that you're supposed to be feeling throughout the episode!
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It's like the episode was produced by some kind of random SPN FANFIC generator (minus the incest-kink part of the fandom, of course).
I've ranted. You know I've ranted. Sadly, I didn't even like Bobby in this episode which really indicates what a low point it was for me. So much hate for this episode at the moment. Just *SO* much. I need to stop thinking about it for a while I reckon.
Fortunately, new SGA is to hand! Ah, saved!
But I'll reply to your reply over you know where later. Promise. You said much that I agreed with (Surprised? Thought not).
But right now, I need to watch something that makes me happy! SGA, ahoy!
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Sigh.
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Oh GOD!!!!! The last thing I want is for SPN to be like the fanfic! Jesus H. Christ! Please for the love of all that's holy, NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
As you can see, even after a night's sleep, I still feel strongly about this. On the other hand, SGA was great. I don't feel like working my brain up to meta-ing myself. Hmmm... have you posted about it yet? ;-P
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I actually liked this episode quite a lot, and found myself getting all happy at the brother-bonding and Dean's moment where his dream of a sweet, ordinary love is revealed to Sam (it broke my heart a little, and I think it did Sam's, too), but. But. The issues the show has? I am NOT making the up! They're so clearly there that it's becoming more and more of an effort to avoid them...
One of the things that I just don't like - it doesn't tick me off like the misogyny does, it just plains annoy me - is how extremely blatant they have to be in everything. If blatant is the right word? The whole over-the-top telling, not showing, and making every single emotion and nuance of the character so explicit there is nothing left to wonder about. For example:
"How dead you are inside. How worthless you feel."
Those are actual QUOTES. From the show! From Dean meeting himself, and it made me roll my eyes and wonder if he has scribed the words on his very soul, with ink of blood, or something like it, because... there is angst, and then there is this. There is having a character with issues, with a darkness or sadness to them, there is giving them layers of experiences both good and bad, and sometimes the bad will be fairly horrific... and then there is making that all the character is.
I still have enough feelings left for the show to go oh, Dean when I watch a scene like Dean vs Dream!Dean, but - I much, much prefer the more subtle touches of Doppelganger to this.
I don't even know what it is that makes me need subtlety. Some subtlety, anyway. Enough that a character isn't stripped down to their basic components right there on the screen - here's the angst, there are the daddy issues, there's the bad self-esteem, there is his love for his brother, and over there are his repressed fears. I don't want my characters to be Lego! I don't want to be able to draw my own Dean by coloring the numbered fields. Building blocks and coloring books are fun up to a certain point, but then I start craving water colors and blank paper - start craving nuances and layers. Maybe it's just that it's more of a challenge? Or maybe it's got something to do with wanting the characters to feel more real?
Back to this particular episode - yes, why couldn't it have been Bobby's brother? Even the random one-shot characters in the first season were more often siblings or parents or such than husband-wife, and it wasn't always about having the nightie-clad woman horribly murdered (no disrespect intended to Jessica and Mary, who died for the sake of a plot that was much more interesting before it became so de-mystified).
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Women in refrigerators! I almost said that in the above post, and then I thought, naaah, people won't know what I'm talking about -- I didn't know the term was that widely known outside Marvel/DC fandom. :D
But yeah, it's almost become self-parody at this point, because every single male character on the show is motivated or was catalyzed by some horribly-dead woman in their past (even including some of the minor characters like Gordon).
I really didn't have a problem with Jessica and Mary, especially since at that point it looked the similarity of their deaths, and the manner of their deaths were part of some kind of master plan. (Ha. No.)
And I always used to roll my eyes a little bit at discussions of mysogyny on the show. But ... it's gotten to the point where you can predict plotlines based on it. Of course Bobby's got a dead wife in his past; of course he's the one who killed her, in a particularly brutal and personal way. I wasn't surprised at all, and that's BAD. The audience reaction at that point should have been "Shock! Horror! Oh wow, I can't believe they went there!" Instead, for me at least, it was more like ... "Yep. Saw that coming."
Looking back at the early episodes vs. recent ones, too, it's been a long while since we've seen women who were other than housewives or femme fatales, isn't it? I mean, the show's never been that great at portraying a balanced cross-section of humanity, to say the least, but we used to get female cops and things. I loved Ellen and I think I would have really liked Tamara (was that her name?) from the season premiere as an ongoing character. (And hey! She had a guy in her refrigerator, so to speak.)
I was thinking, when I was reading the Locke Lamora books, how they do such a fantastic job at having great women characters in a book that's really all about the guys! I mean, the women really start coming into their own in the second book, but even in the first, which doesn't have any female characters even approaching main character status, you've still got a really strong sense that women are full participants in the culture and history of this world. Even though they're very much in the background, you can see that women are brawlers and athletes and soldiers and guardsmen and merchants. The world just feels well balanced, even though the books are about the guys and I don't want or need them to be otherwise.
Carrying on to another comment ...
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I'd heard it before, but it was because of the huge Mary Jane comiquette/Tentacle rape cover kerfuffle last year that decided to look up exactly what it meant, and where it came from. As I find it to be a brilliant shorthand for something that goes on in a lot more media than just those comics, I'm all for spreading it around!
Anyway.
But yeah, it's almost become self-parody at this point...
It has, hasn't it? And I find that really sad, because the show started out with so much promise. But if it's revealed that Bela's angsty past is due to some dead female relation of hers, I will still laugh! (At least that means it's a kind of angsty past not reserved to guys...? Except, of course, for Jo and Ellen, who had a different kind of angst - which will now go unexplored! - in their past. Huh. Men die in "hunting accidents", women die in their lingerie. What a surprise.)
I really didn't have a problem with Jessica and Mary, especially since at that point it looked the similarity of their deaths, and the manner of their deaths were part of some kind of master plan. (Ha. No.)
Exactly! If it's for a plot reason, I'm much more willing to forgive that sort of thing. It was an image that stayed with people from the pilot, I think - I know it did with me. The woman pinned to the ceiling, bleeding and on fire. (I don't care how bad a person that makes me - part of me just wants to say cool at that!)
Instead, for me at least, it was more like ... "Yep. Saw that coming."
Like you said - it's like they're trying to parody themselves, or something. They're so blatant about it, I don't know how they can not notice what it is they're doing...! Now they're bad enough that it's getting to people who are usually able to switch off that kind of critique and enjoy the show, and that's such a bad sign. It's a sign that it's time to have a "how can we not suck" staff meeting!
Looking back at the early episodes vs. recent ones, too, it's been a long while since we've seen women who were other than housewives or femme fatales, isn't it?
Yes! I was talking to another friend about this earlier in the season, and that's it, exactly - it's always about the Winchesters vs the world, and as such, a show where there was no real place for anyone else, male or female. (But particularly not female - the Winchesters' world is a very male one.) But it used to be that back in the first season, I could look at the show and be kind of proud of it, because despite the lack of cool recurring female characters, they did great stuff with roles that other shows would just have diluted down to the "Babe of the Week". SPN had their share of BotW, but they took the damsel in distress cliché and turned it on its head - we had the sister who insisted on coming along to look for her lost brother, the girl on a date in the asylum who could handle a shotgun and dumped her stupid boyfriend, the single mom - Missouri! (Remember Missouri?)
And then, something happened. Last season, they got Jo, and I think she and Ellen got slotted in as the token "strong women", precluding the need for the other women on the show to be anything but monsters or victims. Then this season they got Bela and Ruby, and it's as if they decided that now they were all set, they had their tough chicks, now they could do whatever they wanted to the guest stars! And we've all seen what that got us.
I think the fact that this coincided with their upping the gore factor might have made things worse, but that's not the only reason this season has been giving me the creeps. (The wrong kind of creeps! I was so grateful to this last ep for being genuinely scary without being disgusting that it's not even funny. That's not something that should make me go 'yay, show!'. Not when they did so well in the first seasons even without the blood and... teeth, and nastiness.)
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Yes, Ellen! And the female cop in the cannibal ep, I did love her. And Tamara, too! She could have stayed. (They could have a person of color on the cast actually be an ally, and a warrior in her own rights. Except that with their track record, I'm not sure she would have made it very far before she turned "evil" for some reason, and had to be put down. A woman, and not white? ...yeah, I'd get the HELL away from the Winchesters.)
I was thinking, when I was reading the Locke Lamora books, how they do such a fantastic job at having great women characters in a book that's really all about the guys!
Yes! That was such a nice experience, reading those books and finding a perfectly plausible world where men and women weren't the same, but still equal. The first book didn't do very much with them, but I agree that you could feel their presence - by the second, some of my favorite characters were the women they met! And they weren't just taken from the Buffy mold, but actual people, with interesting histories and loyalties and strengths and weaknesses, and - and I think I might love those books a little too much, because now I'm all sad that it'll be over a year until I get more!
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SO MUCH YES. To all of it, really. I do still get happy little quivers from Dean. He suffers so beautifully. :D But, Dean used to be like an onion, with all these fascinating layers to explore. As the layers are stripped away, well ... I think your paint-by-numbers analogy is very apt.
I don't know why either, but I've always lovely subtlety and subtext in my fiction. I love having to read between the lines and pick apart the characters in order to figure out their motivations and relationships. I think SGA continues to hold my interest in part because they continue to hold things back, and make you do that filling-in-the-gaps things. As mentioned elsewhere, SGA really does nail the perfect fandom equation, because there is a tremendous amount of subtext but very little of it ever makes it to the surface -- and yet, I don't think we're making it up; it really is there. I adored "Doppelganger", and in that final scene with John, it really did leave an awful lot up to the imagination -- we learned a lot about what drives him (or, more like confirmation of what we already knew) but there's still a lot unspoken. In fact, very little was spoken; as obvious as some of his motivations were in that scene, there was still so little that was actually said.
And the trouble with making the subtext into very blatant text is that we're left with only one possible interpretation of a character -- and it may not fit with the complexity we've seen in the past. Dean as a one-trick pony, driven by self-loathing and the desire to prove himself to his father ... how does that fit with the Dean we've seen who's genuinely selfless and heroic, and likes saving people, likes being a Hunter? And even less pleasant is the idea that Dean needs to be taken apart and forced to admit his flaws and then "fixed". It's like the show is now being written not just by a fanficcer, but by a badficcer! XD
And just on a personal level, I don't want Dean to be motivated by self-loathing. I want to believe that the joy we sometimes see him express for what he does is real. I want to see his longing for a peaceful suburban life as kind of similar to Rodney's fantasy about having a wife and kids and being a family man -- a halcyonic dream that's almost amusing for how utterly wrong it would be for him in reality. Which, well, might be true of Dean, I suppose, but the more we see of him, the more I think the writers want us to believe that Dean's father broke him and if he could just get away from the memory of John and from the Hunting lifestyle, he'd be happy. That's much too pat, too simplistic.
But I think the part where my subtext-ometer really overloaded was the scene between Dean and Bobby in the dream. I already discussed in a comment at Derry's journal why Dean's remark about Bobby being like a father to him doesn't work on either an individual level (because Dean just wouldn't say that, even in a dream) or on a character-relationship level, either. As the rest of the episode took pains to remind us, Dean had a father ... a father who was the guiding light in his universe. Bobby was like a father to him ... WHEN? I love Bobby and I love the quasi-familial relationship that he has with the boys, but for someone who grew up like Dean did, in a tight and exclusive family unit -- and especially when his relationship with his actual father was such an odd combination of hero-worship and resentment ... it just does NOT seem like something he'd even think, let alone SAY!
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I guess that's why the incest and RPF is so popular in SPN fic - it's the only way you can color outside the lines!
I love having to read between the lines and pick apart the characters in order to figure out their motivations and relationships.
I used to think that I loved getting the good stuff - getting the emotion, getting things spelled out, having the characters prove their love and loyalty and such on screen. But after SPN and SGA, I'm beginning to realize that I'm actually much more like you. There is a LOT to be said about anticipation, about the little moments that whet the appetite, rather than sates it. There is a lot to be said about subtext and subtlety and reading between the lines - mostly, I guess I'm not actually as lazy as I thought! I don't mind it if the writers don't go all the way, because it leaves me somewhere to go myself.
Seriously, if you'd put this sort of argument in front of me a couple of years ago, I probably would've thought the person preferring a show like SGA to SPN was seriously weird, because who doesn't want to have all their fannish dreams fulfilled? But now? Now I know what you mean, and agree most emphatically! Good writing teaches to "show, don't tell" for a reason.
And the trouble with making the subtext into very blatant text is that we're left with only one possible interpretation of a character -- and it may not fit with the complexity we've seen in the past.
Oh. You're right! That's just sad. Because thinking back - yes, I did see more driving him than just the daddy issues and self-loathing. Back in first season, it wasn't even reading it as self-loathing as much as the older brother's instinct to put his brother before himself - and that's all it meant. That Dean loved Sam more than he loved his own life. (I'm all for that, by the way!) But now - uh. Yeah. I guess it's kind of hard to come up with fanwank to justify alternative readings when Dean's subconscious is laying things out for us. Siiiigh.
It's like the show is now being written not just by a fanficcer, but by a badficcer! XD
*shudder* One of the ones with a raging hate of all female charcters, too. Poor, poor show. *pats it*
I want to see his longing for a peaceful suburban life as kind of similar to Rodney's fantasy about having a wife and kids and being a family man -- a halcyonic dream that's almost amusing for how utterly wrong it would be for him in reality.
I just wanted to give the thumbs up to this reading of Dean! I like it! And not just because It's much more interesting than what the show is delivering.
love Bobby and I love the quasi-familial relationship that he has with the boys, but for someone who grew up like Dean did, in a tight and exclusive family unit -- and especially when his relationship with his actual father was such an odd combination of hero-worship and resentment ... it just does NOT seem like something he'd even think, let alone SAY!
*nod nod nod* YES! I was thinking pretty much EXACTLY what you wrote here and over in the other comment when I was watching the scene. It had to pause and ask myself if I might have misunderstood something somewhere, but - no, that was Dean, and he told Bobby "you're like a father to me", and Bobby didn't seem to find this strange. WHAT? You can't just DECIDE that the characters now have that kind of relationship - it doesn't work like that, even if you want it to! It's the choice of "father", it's that Dean says it out loud, it's that Bobby might be an uncle, but not a father, it's all the father issues, it's just - EVERYTHING is wrong about that one line. (Maybe they're all still dreaming, and that was just part of the nightmare...!)
Ah. All this talk is making me so happy that four seasons on, Rodney is still Rodney, and John is still John, and for every part of themselves they reveal, there's still something waiting to be discovered... ♥
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To start with, SPN had so much potential in terms of LAYERS to the characters (I actually read some reviewer in a sci-fi magazine refer specifically to that in describing first season Dean). But now they seem determine to lay all the boys emotions out bare and rain anvils upon us with every anvil more angsty and despairing than the last.
I really wish they'd learn that SUBTEXT IS ITS OWN REWARD!
All this talk is making me so happy that four seasons on, Rodney is still Rodney, and John is still John, and for every part of themselves they reveal, there's still something waiting to be discovered... ♥
So very, very true. Again.
Carry on. ;-)
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At the start of season 4, I was really worried that they were going to mess up the team dynamic with some of their changes (and of course, by "mess up" I mean "turn it into something I like less"). But instead, it's just as much fun as it was, if not more so.
Of all the open-canon shows I've gotten into in the last few years, I think this might be the ONLY one that hasn't slowly lost my interest for a variety of reasons. Lost is now dead to me. *g* SPN -- well, the above discussion pretty much defines the problems there. SG-1 I quit watching, then started again, but never loved the later seasons as much as I loved the first three. Don't get me started on the Firefly movie. :D It hasn't really been that dramatic with most of the other shows I can think of, but there's a general trend of the show losing momentum as it goes along, or simply moving in a direction that is not nearly as appealing to me as a fan.
SGA just keeps pushing my fan buttons! It's so nice! I do hope next season is all right. *crosses fingers*
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It's - it's really different from any of my previous fandoms. I've matured a lot over my decade of fanning, but SGA I think is the first show where I've been so aware of my own relationship with the show (I've never had the chance to do as much meta'ing with so many people before!). For a couple of years before SGA (and SPN, I guess, since I started on SPN the year before SGA) I was mostly into anime/manga fandoms, and those are different. Different in how they deliver, and what's expected, and - really, trying to compare something like One Piece with something like SGA would just be silly. And before that there was no way for me to participate fully, in the moment, in western fandoms.
But it's not just me - I swear that SGA is different from the western shows I have been watching over the past couple of years! I mean, even though I never joined the fandom, I still watched Buffy and Angel and BSG and Lost and Heroes and... despite the fact that I was buying some of them just to get to see them, I never finished watching any of them. I've never seen the last season of Buffy, or Angel - I meant to, but... Well. I never got around to it, and it just wasn't that pressing? Heroes and Lost... yeaaaah, the less said, the better! (WHAT Firefly movie THERE IS NO MOVIE meep) Those were all shows I felt like I could have fanned, but they lost... something along the way. (Heh. Come to think of it, I never finished The X-Files or The Sentinel either, though I always blamed the lack of airing in Sweden for that last one!)
SGA, on the other hand - it's the same for me as what you described, except I've only been at it for eight months or so. SGA gets better. The characters grow, without losing any of what made them interesting in the first place. The friendships grow stronger without getting taken for granted. I think a big part of it is that the writers and actors and all the other people involved in creating the show are still having fun. (That, and they know what they're doing. Unlike certain other shows'.)
For next season, I'm crossing my fingers and knocking on wood, but most of all... at this point, I feel I can actually relax, and simply have faith. ♥
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I do know that it's incredibly rare for me to fan on something for very long, let alone with the intensity that I've been able to maintain for SGA for two years now. But ... it *does* feel different than other shows.
It's really difficult to compare fandoms, because the whole experience is just so different in pretty much every way. SGA is my first real fandom since I've been on LJ, which I'm sure is creating an utterly different experience than the mailing-list and message-board-based fandoms I've been in before. I'm sure that part of the self-reinforcing aspect of the fandom is simply that I love all the discussion and meta, which I had assumed was an LJ thing rather than an SGA thing. But from what you say, anime and manga isn't like that? Or maybe different? The last manga/anime fandom in which I was actively involved in the social side of things was Trigun, my first really big fandom, and that was back in 2000 or so, and all mailing-list-based. I *do* remember a lot of talking about the show and characters, but not a whole lot of the kind of thinky, in-depth meta that SGA seems to attract, even though you'd think Trigun would provide plenty of fodder for it -- but maybe manga is just so *obviously* divorced from the real world that it doesn't lend itself to serious analysis. (I'm now trying to imagine having a discussion of actual historical piracy based on One Piece and ... ow. Brain just broke.)
And this isn't even touching the massive amounts of fic in SGA fandom. Good fic! I keep waiting for the happy glow to wear off this fandom, but it just hasn't done that for me yet.
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Seriously, if you'd put this sort of argument in front of me a couple of years ago, I probably would've thought the person preferring a show like SGA to SPN was seriously weird, because who doesn't want to have all their fannish dreams fulfilled? But now? Now I know what you mean, and agree most emphatically! Good writing teaches to "show, don't tell" for a reason.
*laughs* I'm kinda with you on that. In all my years as a fan, I'd honestly never realized that specific thing about myself until the current round of SGA fanning. It's always been true of me, and I've had a few discussions with
Honestly, I think I'm learning a TON of stuff from all of these fan-meta discussions that are going to be very useful in applying to my own original writing! Writing SGA fic, in particular, is helping me get a handle on "show, don't tell" in human relationships. (In my original writing, I have a terrible tendency to tell ... and tell ... and tell ...) And in particular, the current season of SPN and my own reactions to it are giving me a TON of fodder for what not to do in my original fiction!
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And it makes me think of the discussions we've been having about something like Nightlife vs The Dresden Files, where there are brothers and h/c and things that should be awesomely sweet - but only one set of brothers manage to actually push any buttons at all for me. And that's the set where the caring and worry and such is - unexpected, and shown.
It's interesting, because they're both told in the first person POV, so they're facing the same problems in the showing/telling area, and yet I personally get so much more out of the little glimpses we see of the true depth of the brothers' feelings in the Dresden Files than I do of all Cal's talk about how amazingly selfless and protective and wonderful his big brother is.
And I'm also thinking about the Locke Lamora books, where there is a lot of delivering the potential, but... At the same time, there I guess part of it is that the characters, like the team on Atlantis, have other relationships that are important to them. They work together, and owe each other their lives countless times over, but somehow the way Scott Lynch tells their story doesn't lessen the impact of the things they actually do for each other. Now I kind of wonder why! Why is it that those books work so well for me?
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Important lessons to be learned - if ever you wake up in SPN, make sure to always go to bed fully dressed! Sam & Dean should film some PSAs - 'Eschew lingerie: it can save your life!'
Subtlety of char development would be appreciated, yes, I think we've had this discussion before (sitting on the steps of Fushimi Inari, if I recall? ^^) This kind of revelation can be effective if you've been waiting for it...certain points in s2 it was still exciting to hear things implied in s1 being outright stated. I think the creators realized the points of revelation were emotionally gripping, without understanding that the emotion comes from all the set-up that came before. Now they're trying to short-cut to the climax while skipping the essential buildup.
(Which is why SPN plays so much like fanfic, because fic is all about making the subtext explicit - not just the sexual, either. Fic is by and large about bringing to light the emotional underpinnings of a canon, about lifting up the rocks to see what interesting bugs are squirming beneath. SPN is trying to grow bugs out in the sunlight, and...um...I think I'm tweaking myself out with this metaphor, I'll stop now...)
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Sam & Dean should film some PSAs - 'Eschew lingerie: it can save your life!'
...it may be wrong, but that still does make me giggle. XD
Subtlety of char development would be appreciated, yes, I think we've had this discussion before
Hm. It did feel familiar, yes! But that was before the third season even started - before Dean sold his soul for Sam. So if we were having these issues back then already... wow. I'm so sad the show managed to get worse at show-don't-tell. Sigh.
Now they're trying to short-cut to the climax while skipping the essential buildup.
Exactly! Dean's comment to Bobby felt like the epitome of that - they've got a relationship, but the writers feel they will make it even more deep and interesting and heartwrenching and whatnot by suddenly sticking the lable of "like a father to me" on it. They try, and in my eyes, they fail, absolutely miserably. It doesn't work that way!
SPN is trying to grow bugs out in the sunlight, and...um...I think I'm tweaking myself out with this metaphor, I'll stop now...
But I was having so much fun laughing at it! You could have gone on! XD (And I totally get what you're saying, too.)
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