penguinfaery | (no subject)

http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc

*geekgasm*

Academic papers on Supernatural.

Academic fan related stuff is a secret crack addiction of mine. This+Mechadamia=me locked up for weeks.

...except I totally need to be getting food, and cleaning, and working on homework. And not sitting around reading essays on Supernatural Mpreg.

This cracked me up though:

I'm intrigued by the larger questions our show raises if there's a hell, does that mean there's a heaven? I wrote an episode in which people kill after being visited by something that may or may not be an angel. That, of course, raises lots of questions no one can answer. And it was important to hold onto that ambiguity to keep the world of the show from spiraling out into Judeo-Christian-land, and also because in life we don't ever get definitive answers to questions of faith. Keeping all that going for a whole episode was trickier than I anticipated. When we were working on it, we would put on that Voice Over Guy voice and go, "This week on Supernatural: hot zombie chicks. And next week, Sam and Dean ponder the age-old question, 'Is there a God?'" It was heavy.

It would be interesting to see an interview NOW. As they sure went there.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well yeah, if it was just a nod. I just feel like Supernatural goes way past a nod to just taking things. I mean, it wasn't based on Christianity at ALL (other than having demons, but to be fair, those were originally all based on stuff from urban legends, which is different) - and then they put in Castiel who's dressed like Constantine, and all of a sudden it's a Judeo-Christian story. x.x WTF happened, Kripke? And his ideas of hell and heaven and all are totally taken from Hellblazer and Hellraiser. XD Like... they even say IN THE SHOW that hell is just like hellraiser but 'with less leather' or whatever. I dunno...

I LOVED seasons 1 & 2... it just... became a completely different show. It's not an urban legend based horror show about two brothers fighting monsters anymore. It's about angels and demons and heaven and hell. :\ I guess I've just done that kind of story so many times... unless he was going to do something really unique with it, it just bums me out. I LOVED how unique SPN was for using uniquely American stories, urban legends! So... yeah. Meh. XP

I see what you're saying, I just think they do it well. Course I came into fandom knowing Angels and shit were on the horizon, so it was never a "turn" to me, but I dunno. Even though the show mythology has changed, the monsters of the week and the...tone haven't.

And I'm impressed by how many monster of the week things they still manage to fit in, and keep things moving, without being like "Let's ignore the apocalypse to go do something random for a week." ~~It could be summed up that way, but it doesn't feels like it~~

Anything involving demons is going to have to include more levels then just a simple boogie man in some shape or form, and I can think of a few other options to explain them as a whole that is so relevant, but like you said, this show is very...American, and Christianity is our biggest mythology. As much as I loved, say, American Gods, I had an issue buying that half those gods and pantheons would have EVER been worshiped here, so using Demons from like...Hindu for their over arching mythology wouldn't have fit. I think once they started making demon's such a big deal instead of making Azazel something "else", the path was pretty well set. And I don't think they could have gone on for TOO long without defining some kind of over arching...antagonistic force.