904 (spoilers, of course)

[citrus_java]

Good episode! Clearly a Robbie episode – rethinking the Batcave, shout outs to past events on the show, making character moments, working out the issue of Sam's room, fan shout outs, sense of wonder, broment, Charlie, POL, and just the quality of writing.

I like that the writers are making a serious effort to add female characters we'd like to the show. And I love that mostly they aren't there as love interests, though we get enough hints to interest the fic writers (I hope). It's interesting to me to watch them trying to write for an audience of women, when you're writing a show that isn't your stereotypical show for women. Trying to figure out what we want, how to make it work, whether or not to give it to us etc. As awesome women on the show go, though, to me Dorothy was a nice try, but a miss. "Strong feminine mostly normative woman making it in the men's world without too many traits" is one way of being awesome, perhaps, but kinda done.

GoT! I must revisit the drawing the awesome Leigh Lahav made for my prompt! :-)



Charlie and the books, and fanfic, eeeeee! No wonder she appreciated them having a dungeon. Wonder if Becky ever, erm, edited anything in or out. The ever-subtle Dean wants to know where he can find them. Please read them and figure out the thing with the message Sam still think you left him, Dean. And while you're at it, have a talk about the amulet, please, now.


I LOVE that they finally mentioned Sam's room. Sam not wanting to jinks it and call it a home. Love that Sam talked about it (though he changed the subject before, with Charlie). On top of what Sam said, perhaps he felt/feels like he was not gonna be around for very long, so why decorate. And that moment in the end, that look! Oh! Better than a hug! Boys, you're there! In your untalky , bondy selves, yes! Yes! YES!
Now!

Why was the slumber party in Sam's room? I get that Dean wouldn't want the it in his privast space, but why Sam's? Cause he has the good TV? What does he watch?
It was interesting to see him sitting on a chair while the others got comfy(ish) on his bed.

Braid Sam's hair, please. It's becoming a show thing. Who do you say gets to do it first?

Dean decorating – fic time! And being bummed out that he'd just cleaned the kitchen, aww, Dean! Anyway, now that Baby's moved in, Dean really lives there too. Plus, it's safer, if they're trying to avoid being found.

And another thing.
Sam: Why did Cas leave, really?
Dean: *opens his coat in a flasher move* Pudding!

By the way – Sam's the one trying to help Cas, *Sam*. Again.

Twice this episode Dean was called stupid. Sam: "You know, Dean, the ones without pictures" – ukgh. Dislike. Can it be OOC, just Zeke being a douchbag? We all know he doesn't have to do the eye thing! Crowley called Dean brainless and Sam soulless (or the other way around?). Ouch. And if Charlie's Toto, does that mean Crowley's the coward? That much might work, the way he seems to think about himself.

I really like that the writers are finally using the Bat Cave.

Comments

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

And as much as I've always loved Ozma and Dorothy together as two awesome girl adventurers, if you read the wikipedia from Spn!Dorothy's pov, you can kind of see why Dorothy might think Ozma is an ass -- especially the part where Ozma takes the throne and many realms of her kingdom don't even realize it. :P Also, Dorothy is a grown woman, and Ozma stays forever a 14 year old girl. :P

That's interesting, thank you!
Reading about it reminded me of the plot I know from the cartoon (pardon the blasphemy :)).

I think we have to insist on strong women characters, and strength that comes in many iterations.

I agree that there are different sorts of strength, and it's important to depict them, but why must we insist on strong woman characters? Why do they have to be strong at all, and why does it need to be a central part of their characterization?

Strong women set unfair standards, we're doing to ourselves the same thing society's doing to men, and everyone should cut it out, IMO. As I understand it, originally strength was considered to be a feminist characterization, in order to prove that women can do anything men can do, perhaps even better than men. But that's living in a world developed by men, for men, and not necessarily what everybody wants. I want to have other parameters, strength is really overrated. And I want to deserve to be a person - a cool, awesome person - even when I'm weak. I don't want to put everything into proving to society that it should give me rights. And equating strength with feminism, or with being a person, is really harmful sometimes. For instance, it puts responsibility for everything on the person. "Had they been stronger, they wouldn't have had trouble with this". But not everybody can be strong. So basically, this means people who aren't strong, deserve what they get. Fuck that. Especially since a person's ability is usually not something that person has much choice about.

I want women and trans* characters who have more to them. For example, to me, one of the most beautiful, amazing things about Dean is his vulnerability, the complex emotions that shine through when he's helpless, the way he struggles and fails to disentangle himself from different ways in which his loved ones make him miserable (partial picture, of course). Where are the female characters who get that sort of characterization, and who are allowed to show such interesting, pretty vulnerability?

Or Sam, when he was dealing with his hell visions. Being crazy, dependent, and knowing it, being a person, a subject, while also being those things, was beautiful to me. Where are the female characters who can be weak and dependent and not sure what's real and what isn't, and also be people, be funny, be "ok apart from the hallucinations"? That is a sort of strength, but mostly it comes from accepting weakness. I want women to be allowed to do that.

There was a scene in Desperate Housewives (not my favorite show, but it had some really great things about it), in which Lynett falls apart over having to make costumes for the kids, something like that. It wasn't comical at all, it had a lot of empathy to it. This was an awesome person going to pieces over having to deal with what's supposedly just a few household chores - not cause she wasn't awesome, but because household chores can be really really hard to deal with. It was such an important thing to say, to me.


I loved that Dorothy underestimated Charlie at first

I liked that a lot too (though it implies secretaries aren't important). To me, it made her more interesting as a character.

But as the story developed Dorothy came to appreciate the kinds of things that Charlie offered. I love that Charlie fangirled Dorothy, without the writers making it more woman on woman

I very much agree, on both points.

In terms of trans characters, I liked Ms. Hudson on Elementary. She was beautifully cast and fairly well written -- I hope to see more of her. :)

Ooh, I never watched far enough to meet her! Sounds awesome :)

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

You sound like me in my academic career, trying to convince my fellow feminists not to overlook the transformative and revolutionary power of domesticity.
:)

I def. agree with you that there is an urge to make women heroes into men. Just to take the most basic example, the "Hero's Journey" that has been popularly defined for us by Joseph Campbell. People seem to skip over the fact that the stories he has distilled into this series of progressions are all about Men. It is literally the Hero's Journey and I'm not sure we can really just lift the template and slide it to the left and expect Women Heroes to fit their Journeys into it.

I run into this all the time when I see fen complaining "I can't stand to see character xx marry and settle down and have kids. She should want MORE." As though the lives of the huge numbers of women who marry and have kids are these vanishing points of dullness. GRRRR. There are infinite ways humans can band together, not just one man one woman, and not all relationships lead to kids, but why does the woman's story have to end if kids occur? that's insane, yet, our storytelling as a culture isn't ready to take on much beyond the youthful Man Hero's Journey.

I am 100% in agreement with you on Dean and Sam above. I am of the opinion that Supernatural has been explicitly exploring the nature of how Men are hurt by forcing them into these hypermasculine roles... excluding them from the daylight civilian sphere of women. I love the huge variety of women characters that SPN gives us... even though their characters are not explored in depth (which is why my longterm fic project is writing all the women characters of Supernatural! hello, my Dorothy, Charlie, and fairy girlfriend Big Bang of next spring!!) One of my favorite side characters of all time of SPN is Lisa Braeden's neighbor, Annette, who drowned her daughter's changeling replacement. !!!! That's the kind of risk in storytelling that SPN can take because of its nature as a genre show. Or (I am a huge fan of Ruby) giving a woman side character a two year arc during which she completely runs the show and achieves her Big Bad Goal, to the point where she willingly dies for it.

I guess too that "Strong woman character" can be read more than one way. It would be better to say "well developed woman character" because of course not every human can be strong all the time. Did you happen to catch Joss Whedon's Much Ado with Amy Acker as Beatrice? She knocked it all the way out of the park... just this amazing nuanced character of a woman making the most out of her individuality within these very tight social constraints... her sorrow about her situation ... and her rage at not being able to defend her cousin's reputation in the ways a man would. So, an AMAZING strong woman character, in a story that emphasizes all the ways she is powerless. :D (Also, I think Joss was really trying to engage some of these issues about strength in powerlessness and vulnerability in Dollhouse, but no one seemed to want to hear how that story might go.... )

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

You sound like me in my academic career, trying to convince my fellow feminists not to overlook the transformative and revolutionary power of domesticity.
:)

:D
Sounds interesting!
And I do related things in my (budding) academic career, too! *high fives*
I never know who I can just say "you know, all that second wavey stuff" to, and move on, so I try to avoid doing it, I hate it when people academic-speak to me about things I could have understood had they been put otherwise :)

People seem to skip over the fact that the stories he has distilled into this series of progressions are all about Men. It is literally the Hero's Journey and I'm not sure we can really just lift the template and slide it to the left and expect Women Heroes to fit their Journeys into it.

*nodnodnod*
I suspect they don't fit a lot of men, either.

There are infinite ways humans can band together, not just one man one woman, and not all relationships lead to kids, but why does the woman's story have to end if kids occur? that's insane, yet, our storytelling as a culture isn't ready to take on much beyond the youthful Man Hero's Journey.


I agree. I have some trouble with traditional family stories, because of my own needs and my own issues, which I want to get to see in culture too. but I very much agree that the "having children" story is very unfairly told, if at all. Romantic relationships, for instance, can be idealized and revisited, and are never considered a boring waste of a life. Why are they any more meaningful or interesting than raising a person? To me, raising someone seems like one of the scariest, most demanding, fascinating and perhaps total sorts of connection. There have to be good stories in there, adventures too. One of the things I like about SPN / SPN fanon (and another thing it weirdly has in common with Gilmore Girls - I collect those :)) is that it deals with those issues, a bit.

I am of the opinion that Supernatural has been explicitly exploring the nature of how Men are hurt by forcing them into these hypermasculine roles... excluding them from the daylight civilian sphere of women

I agree. Actually, I was amused with a thing that happened to me with the show, regarding that - literally the same week I turned in a paper claiming that Dean will probably never have a real conversation with a woman he respected, he did :)
I think it's still mostly true, about the show in general, but that made me laugh :)

You big bang sound really awesome! And your long-term project is interesting, and ambitious, wow!

Personally I'm a little ambivalent about female characters in canon. I hate how undeveloped they are, as you said, especially compared to the beautifully complex main characters. But there is potential to them, and fanfic authors often make them so much more interesting and wonderful. I've been grumbly about female character on the show as my official stand for a while, but I have to admit I'm enjoying the amazing change (imo) in them since the beginning of season 8, give or take. I adore Meg since Goodbye Stranger, and I very much like Abaddon, Charlie and Linda Tran (such a pity she didn't have a bigger role). I believe it's a result of a conscious effort to make the show less male-centered (and a less successful effort to make it less straight and white). Robbie Thompson's episodes, in particular, seem to persistently include that.

[lj is telling me to stop jabbering, so I'll cut this shorter]
One of my favorite side characters of all time of SPN is Lisa Braeden's neighbor, Annette, who drowned her daughter's changeling replacement. !!!!

Wow, I forgot all about that! Interesting!

And Ruby - the more fandom talks about her, the more amazing she seems.

Also, I think Joss was really trying to engage some of these issues about strength in powerlessness and vulnerability in Dollhouse, but no one seemed to want to hear how that story might go

Much Ado is on my short "to watch" list. Working on it. As for Dollhouse - I agree.