*sadface*

[ratherastory]

I sometimes wonder what show people are watching.

Clearly, it's not the same one I am.

If you need me, I will be over here in my happy bubble that is free of ship wars, character-bashing, and show-bashing in general.

Comments

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

LOVE AND ANGST. It should be a motto for the Show!

I am SO UNHAPPY right now I can't tell you! I find Sam's actions horrendous and awful and I think that, whatever is wrong with him (no soul or whatever), that he's still manipulating Dean and lying to him and GOD I THOUGHT WE WERE THROUGH WITH THAT AFTER SEASON 4, but do I hate Sam for it? No. I want Sam to be redeemed. I want Dean to be whole again, and for that to happen, Sam has to find a way to save himself.

[tahirire.livejournal.com]

See, and *I'M* unhappy because after everything he went through to earn redemption and save the freaking world, they brought him back just to torture him some MORE. *hands*

I just want them to both get some peace. At this point I'd be SO happy if the conflict was between SamnDean vs the bad guys. I know they'll get there, but gah. *impatient now*

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Same here.

The boy jumped into hell, dragging Lucifer with him, and now they brought him back acting like this? Because what he really deserved as a reward was to have his soul removed, act like an even worse version of his Season 4 self, and get himself beaten to a pulp by his brother. Yeah. Totally deserved.

And now half of fandom is all SAM HAS ALWAYS BEEN EVIL AND HE DESERVES IT.

I can't... I don't even... *hands*

I want SamnDean vs the bad guys to. NAO, PLZ.

[tahirire.livejournal.com]

*sobs and clings and hugs you*

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

*sobs and clings and hugs you back*

I got so upset I am typoing all over the place now. SO SAD.

[tahirire.livejournal.com]

Lol, well I am working on my review and just burst into tears, so don't feel bad.

*sips tea*

Here, have a video of Misha having tea. It brightened my day earlier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QX4wO-QYEU

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Hee! You're the second person to link to that in this entry. I love my flist!

I am sorry your review made you cry. There's a reason I don't do anything other than my flaily insta-reaction posts. ;)

[tifaching.livejournal.com]

I want SamnDean versus the Campbells. Think that'll happen anytime soon? They might need them to get the bad guys though. Damn it.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I think that might end up happening closer to the end of the season. I am curious about the Campbells, but am unconvinced by their portrayal so far...

[tifaching.livejournal.com]

As long as it's Sam and Dean together dealing with them, I can wait.

Word to your post so far. I'm mad as hell at Sam right now, but he can't help what's going on inside himself at the moment. Do I like it? No. Can I live with it? Yes. Circumstances are what they are and Show better damned well be working on making things right. Or else...nothing really, I'm in it til the end just keeping my fingers crossed that everything will turn out alright.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

*clings*

I'm angry too! Sam's actions are nothing short of horrific and appalling, but God damn it, it's not his fault, either! I am optimistic that Show will do something good with this plot line.

[emmram.livejournal.com]

YES, the s4 conflict is back, and it bothers me. And after everything that he's done and that's been done to him, Sam still can't get what he needs so badly - for his good intentions to translate into actual good things. I want to be horrified, but I am just so sad.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

And they were SO CLOSE to getting back to where they were supposed to be at the end of Season 5, when Sam took Dean with them to Van Nuys. I was so happy!

Sam can't win for losing, it seems. No matter how hard he tries, he gets kicked in the teeth, and then half of fandom spits on him for coming back broken.

*cries*

[de-nugis.livejournal.com]

The shred of hope I have now is that things have gotten bad so early in the season that I feel like things have to start improving on the Sam and Dean front. Dean's going to find out what's wrong with Sam and he will realize that having your soul removed is a horrific thing, and that though he has every right to be angry he also needs to be compassionate and a crusading soul-recoverer.

I'd rather have the hard-to-watch beatdown in 6.6, however painful, than work slowly towards it till 6.21.

But Sam has done so much, I want him to be allowed to be trustworthy and trusted and I want him to not just have people who love him, because he's always had that, but have people who LIKE him. He's so isolated it's heartbreaking. And sometimes I can't tell if he's manipulating Dean or if it's a shadow of real feeling creeping through, and sometimes I feel like manipulating Dean IS a shadow of real feeling showing through, because he needs to be able to communicate with Dean and he knows that but without the center of himself communication comes out as manipulation.

NOW I AM ALL DEPRESSED AND IT'S YOUR FAULT. Let's talk about how awesome Cas is.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

CAS IS AWESOME! \o/


Sam really is isolated. No one seems to like him. Dean loves him because, well. Bobby is... conflicted at best, and just now admitted Dean was always his favourite (which, frankly, we knew).

The only person who ever truly cared about Sam just for himself has been dead for five years.

Sam is totally manipulating Dean, which, to be fair, has always been his main way of communicating with his brother. They're so dysfunctional it breaks my heart, but I honestly don't think Sam knows how to connect with his brother in a healthy way. Certainly not now.

The whole no-soul bit has to be a hell of a whammy, too. It's like he remembers how he's supposed to feel and is trying to act accordingly, and he just... can't.

On that note:

CAAAAAAAAAAAS!

[de-nugis.livejournal.com]

I think it's more complicated than always manipulative Sam. Dean, when he loves people, projects incredibly strongly onto them and doesn't always see them very clearly; look at his switch from hero-worshipping John to seeing deadbeat Dads everywhere, or look at the way he interpreted all of Sam's heaven memories as reflections of his place in Sam's life and indeed his image of Sam. In that respect Sam, for all that he can get hung up on rage and revenge and obsession and blind himself completely to others, can also at times be clearer-headed than Dean. He thought through his issues with John, and even to some extent with Dean himself, in a way that Dean never has with either John or Sam.

Sam has always responded to Dean's projective tendencies with a mix of playing the roles Dean casts him in (geeky college boy, rebel who always leaves, little brother who needs to be protected and saved, potential monster) and rebelling against them. When Sam desperately wants to reach Dean, like in Fresh Blood or Point of No Return, he speaks in little brother mode not, or not only, because it's his way of getting Dean to do what he wants but because Dean can see him and hear him in those defined roles, and not necessarily if he steps outside them. Now ALL of Sam is a role that he's trying to play, and the core of himself that made the communication real is missing, and he's playing the role in service of his hunting agenda, but I think he might also be drawn to Dean in the hopes that Dean will project a Sam at him that will make him more cohesive, remind him of the missing core. But Dean has a hard time seeing something like "this is a shell of my brother" or "these are the shattered fragments of my brother;" he's looking for "this is my brother" or "this is not my brother." I'll be really, really interested in how their interactions will play out with both of them knowing the truth that Sam is soulless, whatever Spn decides that means.

/rambling essay thing

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course it's more complicated than what I said, but there's a reason I don't write meta: my days of elaborating complicated theses about character motivation. ;)

I am, as always, awed by your ability to put my emotional flailing into words. :D

[emmram.livejournal.com]

Now I actually want to cry.

...

... *does so*

[tahirire.livejournal.com]

Me toooo. *clings*

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I'M SORRY!

*pets you and offers a cookie*

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

It feels different to me than what was going on with Season 4. I guess...Season 4 was about really bad choices on Sam's part, choices with no actual excuses, only justifications. And even though they gave that storyline a certain amount of short shrift, leaving the audience to mostly fill-in-the-blanks, I appreciated it- letting the hero fall through his own flaws, followed by a redemption story line. I love redemption story lines. I mean, Okay, I think I've said before that how they played it out in season 5 didn't work for me for technical reasons, but I still appreciated the intent.

This year it's something different, at least I think so. This isn't Sam going quasi-evil through bad choices- it's something ACTUALLY wrong with him. Presumably something fixable. And so all this drama with Dean...IDK. It doesn't seem like a relationship development (like in season 4) any more than all the crap Meg pulled when Sam was possessed reflected on the brothers' relationship. If that makes sense. I know I'm not saying it very well.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely. It's just that the parallels are still sort of there, and in this case I think Dean might have a much harder time reconciling himself to the notion that it really wasn't Sam's fault this time. Dean himself is so broken and unable to trust, that I'm having a hard time seeing how the writers are going to fix this.

I still have faith that it will be fixed. I'm just anxious about how it's going to be done.

(I *love* redemption story lines. Edmund's plot line was my favourite part of the Chronicles of Narnia. I love that Show went there, even if their execution was shaky.)

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

It often strikes me as funny that I often love Show more for what it tries to do than what it succeeds in doing. It's definitely not up there with the heavyweights of excellent television in the technical stuff- its execution can be shaky, its writing can be uneven, it...it's known its share of failure. But man, it has these flashes of brilliance- it takes these crazy ideas and runs with them and manages to surprise me. (Which is a rare and treasured thing) And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but the attempt is noble all the same.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Show is like the little engine that could! I can see what they're aiming for, and sometimes they hit it out of the park: like in "The End," for instance. HOT DAMN.

I love Show for having such a huge scope, you know? They aim high, and that's more than can be said for most TV these days.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a lot of television is happy to just stay within its limits. "We're good at X, so we'll do X and nothing but X until the cows come home!"

I love that Supernatural doesn't really recognize its own limitations. If it stuck with its strengths, I'm sure it would be a very decent little show, one that would cause far fewer critics and fans to tear their hair out over it...there'd be fewer flops. It'd be more consistent. And yet we wouldn't get the absolutely mind-blowing "where did THAT come from?" episodes. And I wouldn't be nearly as addicted or fannish.

I mean, two of my favorite shows right now are arguably far stronger shows than Supernatural (heh, and one of them has an absolutely marvelous redemption theme. Perhaps even both, depending on how you're looking at it.), but I don't feel the inclination to write about them (fic or meta) or read what other people have to say. I don't feel the need to engage.