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whit_meruleI tried to reflect on season seven generally. I honestly did. But the thing is? I don't feel like I've got a handle on it.
I don't feel like I've followed the emotional arc of any character since season 5. And I've tried, honestly I have. I want to feel that I can trust the writers with their own characters (and forget that I never really connected with season 7 Buffy, or anything past season 2 Angel, for precisely that reason). Supernatural has got to the end of season 5 with power, and the season 6 arc (much as I wish I could fix it) does make sense. I just don't want it to.
So. I wrote In His Image, an enormous 150k-word behemoth which started with the final episodes and the entire complicated emotion arc of season 5, and launched a self-indulgently new canon from that point (yes, so it includes Gabriel and Team Free Love snuggles, so sue me, tell me they didn't deserve them by that point). And it was only after writing that out, and the few little sequels here and there and so on, that I felt like I could begin to even treat season 6 and what had by that point aired of season 7 as canon, rather than just an extremely convincing (and contains Jensen and Jared and Misha and Jim) alternate fanon.
So they kept airing season 7. And they kept starting and stopping. And there was no story that grabbed me (Leviathans? Sorry, don't care, I want my archangels and their brother/family/daddy issues that arc out terrifyingly across the whole plot, and also, can I have Gabriel back?). And so I waited for the season finale to see where this whole story was going, because honestly, much as I love the guys, and much as I love the writing of individual episodes, I had by this point entirely lost track of the story.
Which is only to be expected, surely. Because how many fanfics had I read (and written) in the interim? How does one cling to 'the' story over that?
Except, except. I'm a damned mediaevalist, folks. Know what that means? It means every story I read, every piece of paper or parchment I pick up, is unique. It means that I evaluate it as a whole relative to the entire canon that that author would have known as a whole, and that no one can ever reproduce an entire literary work identical to any other copy of itself. Every copy of Dante's Inferno from the 14th century is different from every other one because they're done by hand and everyone who copied them had different opinions about what to include - and that's a work with a definitive author, and an easily identifiable source. Forget Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain, and deciding on a definitive copy of that, never mind trying to work out its relation to other retellings of his work in a lot of different languages across a few centuries. And forget the retellings of stories that didn't have a named author at all, that simply became common property and were reappropriated many times both for their cultural weight and for various other relevances that random authors-in-progress decided they could wield, like when Orpheo's Eurydice became Sir Orfeo's Dame Heurodis and was stolen away in Middle English by a fairy king who bore pretty much no relation at all to, you know, anyone like Hades at all, but which still makes a good story and relates beautifully to later stolen-by-fairies stories, including one in which Sam and Dean participated in season 6.
It means I don't care about 'canon'. It means I know, know to my bones, that every popular work of literature across history was fanfic, on one level or another, often on a very basic one. It means that they all vary from their version of canon to make something new of it, and I can love each and every version on its own merits, for its own relevance, and not hate canon for not doing what I want it to do (or its derivative versions for not doing the same thing). Because, honestly, haven't we all read a piece of fanfic about our favourite characters where we loved the boys depicted in it, and loved what they did, and loved the conclusion they arrived at, even if we didn't really want our boys (outside of that story) to arrive in that place? It was good on its own merits, right?
And we don't judge canon harsher than that, right? Right?
... Well, maybe not.
But the thing is, even if canon is just one version of a story, one version that all the other versions riff off... sorry, but I want to feel the story. And I haven't since the end of season 5. I'd love to, but I haven't.
And maybe that's my fault. Maybe it's because I didn't become a serious Supernatural fan until I'd seen the s4-s5 arc, which I did once I had the means to download the whole thing at once, which happened to be halfway through when season 6 was airing. And I watched that entire powerful, beautiful story at once, then I watched it all again, and I went "...", and promptly went hunting for fanfic that had been written during that hiatus to fix my boys, found none that was right, and started conceiving my own.
Hence, In His Image.
But what that means is that, since the end of season 5, I've never sat down and gorged myself on the story, the story as it plays out beyond single episodes, never appreciated a full season as an emotional arc for any character at all.
So, I tried to write a review of season 7, and that is why I couldn't. And back to the start of season 6 I go, to amend that.
And therefore, over the next few weeks, as I prepare my latest (behemoth of a) fic for publication, you'll probably see more of these posts, a few episodes at a time, as I work my way through seasons 6 and 7 and go "oh, so that's what they were doing with that story, now it makes sense and now I trust them".
At least, I hope that's what I will say. I really hope I won't find myself going "whut? whut? whut? YOUR STORY-WRITING, IT MAKES ME SAD". Because I honestly, sincerely, want to trust them. Just like i trust Chrétien de Troyes, even when he screws Percival over.
... Someday he'll come back and finish writing that story, right?
Right?
I don't feel like I've followed the emotional arc of any character since season 5. And I've tried, honestly I have. I want to feel that I can trust the writers with their own characters (and forget that I never really connected with season 7 Buffy, or anything past season 2 Angel, for precisely that reason). Supernatural has got to the end of season 5 with power, and the season 6 arc (much as I wish I could fix it) does make sense. I just don't want it to.
So. I wrote In His Image, an enormous 150k-word behemoth which started with the final episodes and the entire complicated emotion arc of season 5, and launched a self-indulgently new canon from that point (yes, so it includes Gabriel and Team Free Love snuggles, so sue me, tell me they didn't deserve them by that point). And it was only after writing that out, and the few little sequels here and there and so on, that I felt like I could begin to even treat season 6 and what had by that point aired of season 7 as canon, rather than just an extremely convincing (and contains Jensen and Jared and Misha and Jim) alternate fanon.
So they kept airing season 7. And they kept starting and stopping. And there was no story that grabbed me (Leviathans? Sorry, don't care, I want my archangels and their brother/family/daddy issues that arc out terrifyingly across the whole plot, and also, can I have Gabriel back?). And so I waited for the season finale to see where this whole story was going, because honestly, much as I love the guys, and much as I love the writing of individual episodes, I had by this point entirely lost track of the story.
Which is only to be expected, surely. Because how many fanfics had I read (and written) in the interim? How does one cling to 'the' story over that?
Except, except. I'm a damned mediaevalist, folks. Know what that means? It means every story I read, every piece of paper or parchment I pick up, is unique. It means that I evaluate it as a whole relative to the entire canon that that author would have known as a whole, and that no one can ever reproduce an entire literary work identical to any other copy of itself. Every copy of Dante's Inferno from the 14th century is different from every other one because they're done by hand and everyone who copied them had different opinions about what to include - and that's a work with a definitive author, and an easily identifiable source. Forget Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain, and deciding on a definitive copy of that, never mind trying to work out its relation to other retellings of his work in a lot of different languages across a few centuries. And forget the retellings of stories that didn't have a named author at all, that simply became common property and were reappropriated many times both for their cultural weight and for various other relevances that random authors-in-progress decided they could wield, like when Orpheo's Eurydice became Sir Orfeo's Dame Heurodis and was stolen away in Middle English by a fairy king who bore pretty much no relation at all to, you know, anyone like Hades at all, but which still makes a good story and relates beautifully to later stolen-by-fairies stories, including one in which Sam and Dean participated in season 6.
It means I don't care about 'canon'. It means I know, know to my bones, that every popular work of literature across history was fanfic, on one level or another, often on a very basic one. It means that they all vary from their version of canon to make something new of it, and I can love each and every version on its own merits, for its own relevance, and not hate canon for not doing what I want it to do (or its derivative versions for not doing the same thing). Because, honestly, haven't we all read a piece of fanfic about our favourite characters where we loved the boys depicted in it, and loved what they did, and loved the conclusion they arrived at, even if we didn't really want our boys (outside of that story) to arrive in that place? It was good on its own merits, right?
And we don't judge canon harsher than that, right? Right?
... Well, maybe not.
But the thing is, even if canon is just one version of a story, one version that all the other versions riff off... sorry, but I want to feel the story. And I haven't since the end of season 5. I'd love to, but I haven't.
And maybe that's my fault. Maybe it's because I didn't become a serious Supernatural fan until I'd seen the s4-s5 arc, which I did once I had the means to download the whole thing at once, which happened to be halfway through when season 6 was airing. And I watched that entire powerful, beautiful story at once, then I watched it all again, and I went "...", and promptly went hunting for fanfic that had been written during that hiatus to fix my boys, found none that was right, and started conceiving my own.
Hence, In His Image.
But what that means is that, since the end of season 5, I've never sat down and gorged myself on the story, the story as it plays out beyond single episodes, never appreciated a full season as an emotional arc for any character at all.
So, I tried to write a review of season 7, and that is why I couldn't. And back to the start of season 6 I go, to amend that.
And therefore, over the next few weeks, as I prepare my latest (behemoth of a) fic for publication, you'll probably see more of these posts, a few episodes at a time, as I work my way through seasons 6 and 7 and go "oh, so that's what they were doing with that story, now it makes sense and now I trust them".
At least, I hope that's what I will say. I really hope I won't find myself going "whut? whut? whut? YOUR STORY-WRITING, IT MAKES ME SAD". Because I honestly, sincerely, want to trust them. Just like i trust Chrétien de Troyes, even when he screws Percival over.
... Someday he'll come back and finish writing that story, right?
Right?
