Supernatural Season 3 - Ep 6 (Red Sky at Morning)

Superwiki has a list of physical fights the brothers have had with each other:
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/Fights
I bloody love fandom.

Ep 6 - Red Sky at Morning
People are drowning in strange locations, like the shower.  Our boys investigate and discover that the victims see a ghost ship before they die.  It's a pretty damn cool ghost ship. All the victims have caused the death of a family member.
Bela Talbot is also investigating- so that she can find the thing causing the haunting and sell it for profit - and they end up working together.  There is a sudden and inevitable betrayal at the end.  Of course there is.  And Bela also sees the boat and has to get the boys to help save her.  They get rid of the ghost in the nick of time and Bela gives them £10k each for their part in her job.

Notable points:
- Good visual effects, especially on the eyes when one victim is dying.  The eyes bulged and went red.
- The second victim, Peter, dies in front of the brothers and yet neither try CPR on him.
- Bela, and later on Crowley, are good British characters.  They have actual personalities, unlike the British Men of Letters we see in a dreadful later season.
- Dean looks incredibly sharp in a suit.  He is completely blindsided by Bela's confidence and forwardness and it's quite gratifiying to see.  He seems to give care and respect to his partners, whereas Bela knows she's sometimes just wants sex and it doesn't have to be nice.  Dean should have taken her up on the suggestion of angry sex.
- Sam gets harassed by Gert, the first victim's Aunt.  It's played for laughs, it is kind of funny, but I am a mite uncomfortable with the joke being that older women want sex.  If Sam had been a little more into it, or was reciprocating the charm, the humour would have been better.
- Sam mentions Castiel's name in a spell, but there is no hint that it is significant.
- The ghost is an old pirate that was hanged by his brother, the Captain of a ship.  Cain and Abel are mentioned.  I think this is the first mention of any parallel brothers-in-conflict storyline.  In later seasons we get the Michael/Lucifer and Dean/Sam fights, and obviously we get Cain himself.

Supernatural Season 3. episodes 3- 5

Getting back into this....I will include my episode notes, which might account for the poor structure of this post.  Spoilers ahoy.
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Ep 3 - Bad Day at Black Rock
My notes say that I do not care for Katie Cassidy who was the first actress to play Ruby.  I've changed my mind since then.  I think I prefer her to Genevieve Cortese actually.  That might earn me dagger looks from some parts of fandom.  I was left unconvinced by Cortese's acting.

INTERESTING TIDBIT.  Shoshannah Stern who played Eileen in later seasons auditioned for the role of Ruby.  I am intrigued by this possibility (potentiality?).  I would like to read fanfic where Stern is cast as Ruby instead.

Ruby turned up The Magnificent 7 (ep 1).  I have no idea why my notes for her are around this episode's notes.  Clearly I'm a poor note taker.  I have also written down that I do not like John.  Fuck knows what I was writing.

This episode - the boys come across a lucky rabbit foot.  Lucky to start with, then you lose it, and your luck turns bad.  This is probably seen as a classic episode.  I don't know fandom well enough to say for sure.*  I like it a lot.  The boys are acted well, the humour is funny, there is a horrible gory bit at the start, and Bela Talbot is introduced.  I love Bela.  She's attractive and snotty and confident and clever.  I feel that As A Feminist (TM) I shouldn't list her attractiveness as the first trait I like, but it's the truth.  I'm shallow.

Ep 4 - Sin City
Far better than the dreadful movie of the same name.

There's a once failing town somewhere in America with demonic omens.  It turns out that there are two demons there and they have been laying the framework for people to condemn themselves through sex, drinking, gambling, suicide etc.  Note to self: The demons are the lady bartender and the priest, no one else.

Question for the masses - Why do demons leave demonic omens wherever they go?  Is it something innate in them? Can they help it?  Do they like the uncertainty and discord the omens sow?  Or is it deliberate?  Demon omen fic needed ASAP please.

Other thoughts - Bobby is fixing the colt, Ruby offers to help.  I like Bobby's dedication to his work.  The concentration and perseverance he displays.  All hunters have it, but I really noticed it in Bobby in this ep.
- Dean has started looking tired in this episode.
- Richie is a very stupid hunter.
- Dean doesn't know the exorcism ritual by heart.  I don't really buy that.
- The theology of SPN really comes into it's own in Se3.  It fascinated me on the first watch.
- Azazel's name is revealed.
- Dean wonders if Sam came back from his Se2 death wrong.  For my money, no.  He's always been angry.  he's always been dangerous.  He's just not as upfront about it as Dean is.  I don't know whether that's Sam intentionally hiding it, or ifit's second nature to him by now. Perhaps he's just used to pretending to be normal an by the end of Se 2 he flipped his lid at the demon gate being opened and him being killed.

Ep 5 - Bedtime Stories.
An enraged soul who named Callie is in a coma.  In an attempt to get justice for the accident that put her in the coma she makes local citizens act out fairytales - The 3 little pigs, Cinderella, Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood.
- Dean claims he doesn't know any fairy tales.  I think this is macho bullshit on his part.  There's no way he didn't read any to Sam when young, or come across them on the telly.  He's not illiterate.
- Sam and Dean's argument about Dean's deal is very child/parent-ish in tone.  Dean hasn't accepted that Sam is an equal adult at this point.  He doesn't until late season 5 when he agrees to Sam taking Lucifer in.
- This season is already sunnier and more fun in tone than Season 2.
- Adult Callie is absolutely caked in makeup and someone has drawn her brows on.  That is a ridiculous thing for costuming and makeup to do.
- At the end of the ep Sam leaves and tries to make his own deal to protect Dean, but the demons won't play.
- Bobby has fixed the colt.


*It feels bizarre to not know this fandom, as in the fans in the community, very well.  I continually compare it to my time in comics fandom, and I feel very much like an outsider.  The politics of the fandom, the adoration of the actors is lost on me.  In comics folk idolise the creators, obvs because the stories and characters are 4 colour wonders, rather than real people.  Idolising actors bemuses me.  Sure, they are very pretty, but they are fallible, and I suspect have had many nasty moments.

Supernatural Season 3 - episode recap (the first)

Found this in my drafts. I reckon I started it late May, but never managed to finish it, or to recount the remaining season 3, 4 and 5 episodes I have since watched.   3 seasons in under 2 months isn't bad going.  If you keep track of that sort of thing.

I wasn't in a great state for most of June so I was watching SPN but without any ability to write about it.  Watching it gave me something to focus on and distract me from the awful shitstorm that is end of May and the whole of June.

By the time I had got into season 4 I realised that seasons 3-5 blend together really well, it's more like one loooong season than 3 separate ones.  Of course, seasons 1 and 2 are also part of the story, but they feel more distinct to me.  Season 1 is a show that is finding it's feet, that is developing the characters and working out what it wants to be.  Season 2 is pure gold.  It's very good horror and it's visibly and physically dark.  Seasons 3 - 5 have a different feel.  While the events of 1 and 2 are obviously key to the next 3, they just feel different to me.  So perhaps recapping them all in one go (but several blog posts, don't worry), before I go into season 6 will be helpful.  For me, at least.

I'm still bloody bowled over by how much I love such an aggressively masculine show.  Usually shows which are so male don't resonate with me, I am very aware that they are not for me, but Supernatural, it grabs me and pulls me in and sinks it's teeth into me.  I have discovered that there is a large queer and female fanbase, so it would seem that I am not the only atypical audience.  A lot of the fanbase seem to be older women too, which delights me.  I'm not sure I'd feel so comfortable chatting to other fans if they were mostly teenagers.

Anyway.  What follows is a post I wrote back in late May. Enjoy. Or not.

This may be a flawed recap as it seems I didn't take many notes whilst watching it.
A) Who the fuck takes notes while watching a show.  I realise I am odd.
B) I remember when I didn't have to take notes because I would not only remember the episode details, but I would also have the energy and brain function to be able to write things up straight after I watched the thing.

I do know that after the brilliance of season 2, this season was less interesting.  The lighting and colours in the show changed too, it became a lot brighter, which saddened me a little.  There's plenty of good stuff in the season though.  Dean coming to terms with his deal, Sam struggling with finding out about it and his determination to save Dean, Dean's refusal to let Sam do anything.  All of that, it's good to watch and absorb.

There are only 16 episodes in this season, I believe the writers strike cut it short.  I think this worked out well as it meant the planned storylines were lengthened into the next season, which I think probably benefited them.

Ep 1 - The Magnificent 7.  The boys fight the 7 deadly sins (demons).  Dean is reckless due to his deal, but also depressed.  I read him as having passive suicidal feelings.  The brothers meet 2 other hunters who call them out for opening the gates of hell.  That's quite a satisfying moment, because they really did fuck that one up.  I think this is the first episode where there is a mention of the Boy King.

Ep 2 - the Kids are Alright
At this point I got the impression that Dean will spend this season fucking.  I wasn't wrong.  This episode he tries to hook up with an old shag - Lisa, who now has a son, Ben.  My headcanon says that Ben is Dean's son, the show doesn't confirm this.  We get to see what a normal family life would be Dean, and it's kind of heartbreaking.
The monster in this ep is a Changeling, stealing children and replacing them with scary fascimiles.  It's quite a chilling episode.

All Supernatural, all the time

Hello world.  It's been 21 months since I last posted here but now I have Thoughts I want to gabble on about.

If anyone has looked at this blog over the last 5 and a half years they will have noticed a distinct lack of posts, and of those posts, the tone changed somewhat from mid 2014.  As much as I feel strange bringing up my dead child into what seems every topic conceivable, the death of my child changed everything.  It took me out of everything I was enamoured with and my connection to random internet dudes with seemingly normal, happy, un-traumatised lives.

Yes I know that you can never tell what is going on in someone else's life, especially when you just read internet personas, but that's how it felt.

I kept buying comics, irregularly, and I tried really hard to regain the enthusiasm I once had, and it was in there, but buried, and I still can't quite connect with it.  I've been a comics fan my whole life, and a serious comics reader from age 23 ish.  Comics, superheroes, DC comics, are part of my DNA.  I really wanted to take part in them again.  For fuck's sake, I named my child after Superman.  I fucking love comics.  But because of all that, 5.5 and a bit years on, I am still finding it difficult to get swallowed up by them.

I've watched tons of superhero telly and films.  I've got my fix that way.  Some shows are better than others.  Some gave what I want, some didn't.  Titans series 1 is fucking awesome.  I haven't managed to watch series 2 yet.

Then last year I cancelled netflix and got Amazon Prime.  I watched a few shows and got very into them.  Then I settled down to watch Supernatural.  A friend has been into it forever, and it's always been on my list to watch, and then Prime had seasons 1-13 available.

So last October 31st, I watched episode 1.

It's now mid March and I've watched all available episodes, which is mid to season 15, the final season, now airing in the States.  They went on filming hiatus, presumably to do cons, and now the poxy plague has halted filming.

But that's 318 episodes (assuming I can count right), in 4.5 months.  I think I watched 1 episode of Picard and a few Teen Titans Go eps in this period, but no other telly really.

I fucking love this show.  I haven't felt so excited about anything since pre-2014.  That includes all the Star Trek episodes barring TOS that I marathon'd a couple of years ago.  And I bloody love Trek.

I care about the characters haircuts and food choices, and relationships, and personality depths, and in jokes, and the depiction of the monsters, and I have got my own headcanon for various episodes, and I love to hate some characters and plot developments, and I have shouted about my passion for this on facebook, and on twitter, and I CARE.  I care about who they fuck and who they fight, I imagine what would happen if they crossed over with the Discworld, I do comparative analyses of Supernatural vs Buffy in my head, I care about the philosophy of the show, the theology, the morals, the music, the actor's acting styles, the clothes.  I care about what the show has to say about women and about men and about justice.  I care that it has queer characters where being queer isn't a plot point, it's just normal.

I have fallen hard and fast for it and I am a fan again.  I fucking love fandom.  The passion and the nitpicking and the camaraderie and the jokes and the seriousness and the passion.  Fandom of nay sort can be pretty toxic, Supernatural has it's own toxic fandom, but on the whole I'm happy to be a part of it again.

Over the last few months I have had Thoughts about The Show buzzing around my head, but I was too busy watching it to write anything down.  Now I'm all caught up I have time to write, and to get my thoughts down.  Some will be Serious Thoughts, some will be Fluffy Thoughts.  This is the first post and now I need to work out what I'm going to do next.  And how to tag these posts because I swear, I have totally forgotten what my lists of labels are.

Things I love about (superhero) comics

As I'm away for the weekend and won't be online tomorrow I'm doing 2 posts today, this is the second.

A while back I thought I’d do a post listing the things that I particularly love about superhero comics. So here goes.

1) Wally West and Linda Park’s relationship
She is his rod and serves to anchor him to this plane of reality, not get dragged into the speed force. They love each other so much that even when he’s trapped in some distant place he can find his way back home by focusing on her. During Infinite Crisis (or thereabouts) he ran home to say goodbye to her as he knew he was getting pulled away somewhere unknown and her reaction was ‘you’re not bloody going without me’ and promptly hung on.

I just love the idea that you can be (mutually) in love with someone that much that they serve as a way to ground you and bring you back home when you’re in danger. I think it’s wonderful and oh so perfect.
Yes, I am a product of a broken home.

2) You don’t need words
There’s an issue of Young Justice, # 31, which has no text in it at all. You’ve got Bart’s thought bubbles which are just images and no words. The art is impeccable and flows so well it tells you all you need to know. I'm someone who didn't pay a lot of attention to stuff around her when younger. Now I'm relearning how to be observant and take everything in and part of that involves really paying attention to the images use in comics, as well as how they're used.

3) The sheer epic scale of it all
Two things about this point really. One is that because it’s epic you quite often get huge universe spanning wars and then there’s lots of lovely tragedy. I enjoy a good bit of tragedy.
The second thing is that because the Universe is so bloody large and it’s got such a lot of published history there is so much to learn. Let’s face it, as a new reader, started reading comic properly about 5 years ago, I’ve got a hell of a lot of catching up to do. Considering I get frustrated when I come to the end of a 6 book fantasy series, because I haven’t learnt enough about each character, or the world’s history, or the culture or whatever, superhero comics are a bloody godsend.

4) Powers
Flight, laser vision, ice breath, telekinesis, supra intelligence, actual wings, shapeshifter, pyschics, Godlike powers, magic, super strength, shrinking people, growing people, time travel, space travel, robots, cyborgs, super speed, talking to fish, sonic screams, magic rings.

5) Fandom
Comics fans are so obsessive about what happens, why it happens, what it means and why it's wrong. Or right, if the individual is in an optimistic mood. I love it, we get so immersed in our fandoms it all becomes so important. I love having a community I can talk to about this stuff.

6) What Avalon's Willow said

Now, fancy throwing in your favourite things about the genre?