(no subject)

[which_chick]

Supernatural (television show) is currently eating my brain. It's more fun than it has any right to be.

I'm not sure how I missed Supernatural, but I totally did. It existed happily in fandom without having ever hit my radar until December. Because of the power of internet, however, I have a record of how it happened. I was talking to Alyse in Facebook.

Alyse: why read not-porn when you could read porn? i spend all my time reading shit people consider classic lit, if i don't have to read that i want to read the most unintellectual thing possible

Me: Because I want better porn than there is. Because a lot of shit I read has been written by horny sixteen year olds who, to be honest, do not know a whole lot about, say, blowjobs. I know an enormous amount about blowjobs* and it irritates me when they're written by people with no actual experience regarding same. Plus also I can tell.

Alyse: yes tell me more about rippleing abdominal muscles, adopted children, and awkward first dates. hahaha i know almost nothing about blow jobs so i do not have this problem

Me: If I am reading your fic and going "Yeah, you've never actually done this" you are failing as an author.

Alyse: i do hate it when you can't tell what position they're in or if that position is actually physically possible

Me: Legs don't bend that way!!

Alyse: exactly!

Me: I think visual porn (like filmed) is hysterical because of how the people have to be posed so that the camera can see the "important" bits.

Alyse: hahah truth

Me: It's so awkward.

Alyse: also the faces

Me: <-- totally not getting anything done at work today. And the echo-y noises because this is being filmed in an empty house/room with dirty floors. Porn outtakes are fun, though.

Alyse: i just finished the very last thing for one of my classes so i'm riding that high. oh my god that exisits? porn outakes is thing?

Me: (was watching gay (dude) porn a while back and the outtake dialogue was a LOT better than the voiceover shit)

Alyse: HOW DID I MAKE IT TO 23 AND NOT KNOW

Me: Hysterical. "Two hundred bucks if you let him fuck you harder." "Slap his ass again." Lulz.

Alyse: who do i give my money to?

Me: I'll see if I can pull up the link. I think I saw it on fleshbot about six years ago, but very pretty. (many penises. I did say that this was gay porn, right?)

Alyse: it might be worth it for the comic effect, few things are funnier than penises

Me: And like tv show "reality" how real is it anyway? But it was good fun.

Alyse: also the tumblr is good for porns if you can deal with the format of the site

Me: http://gay.fleshbot.com/5115418/pat-bateman-should-lose-his-porn-career-over-this-video see what that does -- looks like it's still live.

Alyse: i should have read the link before i opened that in the library. sorry people sitting behind me.


Me: I thought you'd kind of notice that it was about porn. Gay porn. That we've been talking about this whole time. and you'll need sound. But it is funny.

Alyse: you would think that wouldn't you? not the case though

Me: I'm still enjoying mocking the hell out of Sleepy Hollow (good times!) and enjoying the gratuitous shirtlessness of Arrow. It's so... wholesome.

Alyse: i've been curious about Arrow

Me: Arrow is a CW effort, so superhero plot with sops to youngish female fandom. It's doing a reasonable job of it.

Alyse: I love Supernatural in a way that is.. not natural so i am more willing given the cwness of it

Me: I haven't seen that one yet.

Alyse: WATCH SUPERNATURAL

Me: I also have a soft spot for superhero-ic stories.

Alyse: you will not be sorry. it is superhero-esque even if not directly.
demons, angels, hunky dudes

Me: Like, I don't have any trouble believing that a dude can get away with wearing what is basically a leather hoodie and some green eye shadow yet nobody notices he's the tabloid-favorite rich boy.

Alyse: no female love intrests

Me: female love interests are not particularly interesting to me.

Alyse: well if your suspension of belief is that strong, get on the supernatural band wagon

Me: (One of the major reasons all the Arrow pr0n is disappointing is that they keep having him fuck women.)

Alyse: hahah don't worry, supernatural is literally the most homoerotic thing i've ever seen

Me: (Boring. Don't like Laurel. Do like Felicity but we're not going to get that in any way I will find satisfactory.)

Alyse: be ware though. some of the porn is the two brothers. so.

Me: Lol. I laugh at your concern for me. Seriously, that one actually got an out-loud snicker.

Alyse: wincest squicks me out

Me: I do like be ware is two words, though. Sounds more olde-worlde and impressively portentious that way.

Alyse: it will be ickier to you when you understand their relationship

Me: Don't worry about me overmuch.

****(Time passes, in which television is watched.)

Me: supernatural. Are they doing this on *purpose*? It practically writes itself...

Alyse: Yes. Just wait till season 4. You wouldn't even believe. The fic writes itself

Me: it's already angst-o-licious. I am waiting for dinner roll dough to rise, watching tv until my eyes bleed. (wrapped up season 2 today, in which I yelled at the screen repeatedly and explained to nobody in particular that winchester family dynamics are totally screwed up.)

Me, again: straight dudes just don't angstfully gaze at each other that much. Also, I have two brothers who have four years between them. I know a lot about what brothers are like. This isn't it.

Me: I am not complaining, just stating for the record that it doesn't look like any brothers I actually know. (Cass's brothers Waylie and Evan resemble mine and not the spn dudes.) but yes, it's getting funner as I go along.

On Castiel: He's delightful. Has gotten less dick-ish as things have progressed. (He's offed Uriel, Lilith is dead, and we're reunited the boys, so early in 5. Cas is currently briefing me about the antichrist. Whoopie cushions are involved. Cas really needs clothing besides the trenchcoat. Does he own other clothes?

Alyse: Hahahahaha No we love the trench plus the god clean it

Me: I think he needs like paper doll outfits. And he's got great posture.

Alyse: Divine isn't it?

Me: I'm having a good time. The pop culture nods are fun. The dialogue is appropriately snarky. Sam (my Sam, not the one on the show) is a bit concerned about my enthusiasm, but he'll work it out. Oh, and he's an action figure now. Cas.

* On re-reading, this is probably a bit of an overshare, but we are on the internet. Besides pictures of cats, oversharing is what the internet is for.

Comments

[cassandramorgan.livejournal.com]

I also jumped on the Supernatural bandwagon very late. Mostly because part of the fandom is fucking crazy. ("Crazy" in that some of them seriously think that Jensen and Jared are totes in love IRL and that their wives are only beards to keep their love hidden from the normals.) But now I am up to season 8 on Netflix. Cas just keeps getting better and better ^_^

Also, if you have a couple of YouTube hours to waste, all of the cast members are hysterical. There's a lot of footage of them at conventions interacting with each other and fans. Misha Collins is awesome on his own but he's funnier when he's on a panel with Jensen.

<3

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

If you have a geeky show with attractive male leads, there is unfortunately going to be some crazy in the fandom. That style of show attracts what you can characterize as the female neckbeard. Some of them, light on the same social skills that male neckbeards are, fail to grasp that while it's A-OK to write incredibly smutty gay fanfic regarding the characters, it's tacky as all hell to confront the (by all accounts) nice guys who get paid to portray said characters and force them to talk about that sort of thing politely in public settings. (They're not idiots. They know it exists. I'm certain they do, even if they did not explicitly consider and accept "A sizeable portion of your fanbase is going to write enthusiastic, voluminous and explicit gay porn about your character and/or yourself" as a likely outcome of taking the role in the first place.)

To my way of thinking, the Rubicon has been crossed when one argues firmly that said actors are totally gay for each other despite them both being married to other people and raising families and stuff. I mean, for real. They're actors. They get paid to pretend to be Sam and Dean. It's... pretend. They say the stuff they say and look the way they look and move the way they move because they are doing their jobs. What they wear is picked out for them, how their hair is done, how flawless (or not) their skin appears, all of that is being done *for* them by a shit-ton of people who get paid to make them look precisely the way that the folks making the show feel that Sam and Dean should look. You know why there are endless angstful open-mouthed looks coming from Sam? Because he's written that way. Reason Dean goes through life with a pro-forma male gaze that hits on everything with a pulse so matter-of-factly that it's impossible to get angry about it? He's written like that. There's a certain amount of actor interpretation, I'm sure, but there are also a bunch of other people involved in the production who envision a look and a feel for the characters and the show... and if what these other people want to see is not happening, probably the actors get more instructions on how to be and they shoot the scene again.

Female fandom that fails to grasp these kind of basic facts about the way the world works is just as creepy as the male neckbeard who does not understand that girl dressed up like Lara Croft is not actually Lara Croft. *sigh*

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Also, in watching television (and I am totally doing it wrong, I am sure), gag reels are not so much funny as blindingly illuminating how much of this television is shot in very tiny pieces. Seriously, it's so itty-bitty. The pieces are eensy. And then, when I go to watch actual episodes again, I am not watching story so much as I am watching cuts and different camera angles. It's enough to make you dizzy. Also, forty-three is quite late in life to realize that holy shit, television is made like a ransom note.

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

Have you gotten into the seasons where the metafictional lunacy starts showing up for filler episodes? Like, conventions and shit? Or, for that matter, two seasons previous to the current season, an episode named "The French Mistake"?

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I am past the age where being pandered to upsets me. :)

There are stages of one's reaction to being-pandered-to. First, it's wonderful because you're naif and can't tell you're being pandered to. This is like the innocence level of enjoyment. The innocent can enjoy being-pandered-to straight, no chaser (also an awesome acapella group). But, nobody stays innocent forever, so being-pandered-to becomes annoying because you are way too cool to be pandered to and how dare they even try. Your righteous anger ruins the whole thing. But you get older and tireder (righteous anger takes a lot of effort) so you kinda admit that you sort of like being-pandered-to, though you claim it's only ironically fun because you feel vaguely dirty for liking it. Your compromise is liking it ironically as if that somehow disguises your likeage. (Hint: it doesn't. You're not fooling anyone. Also, other people mostly don't give that much of a shit about what you do. Truly, you are overthinking things.) And then even later you can still see that it's being-pandered-to fun but that's still fun and you're okay with fun and don't need to overanalyze your fun in order to justify what you like or make other people think you're cooler than you really are. That's where I am at.

As for where I am in our storyline, somewhere in the first half of season 8, wherein Sam has definitely finished with dog & Vet Lady and Dean broke it off with Vampire from Purgatory. Cas is out of Purgatory and just offed Alfie on the orders of some bitch in a power suit. Kevin is not dead yet. So, yeah, I'm past a bunch of that. They're... reasonably kind, insofar as that sort of thing goes.

I can't fault the reasonably-affectionate mocking that takes place in said episodes. I'll admit that fanfic leans towards the eye-bogglingly weird. Conventions are kind of silly. Larping... fun, but undeniably weird. (Mental leap: SCA is full-frontal larping, but also with crafts.) Fandom as a whole is a fairly bizarre thing, though one that I think largely means well. And, honestly, anyone who's gotten that far along is more than fifty eps in. If the audience was going to die from the shame of being-pandered-to, it would have happened before the makers of the thing set fire to the fourth wall.

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

Although I'm not the demographic being pandered to, I can appreciate the metafictionality for its own abstract humor value. That, and fandom has a certain value-neutral deep structure to it which exists regardless of the material being geeked - kind of like a cultural MBA deal, where you don't actually need to get all the shibboleths to enjoy the service.

I do Supernatural on DVD, so you're about where I am for the year. I still find it to be fun, although you can hear the wheezing of the continuity editor trying to keep up with the writers, laboring under eighty pounds of series bible. Makes me wonder how those decades-old daily soap operas kept up with things - did they just strategically forget continuity in aid of keeping the narrative going?

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I think soaps didn't care quite so much about three-years-ago storylines whereas the fandom here is going to notice and whine about issues along those lines. Geekier people bitch more about continuity.

They're really simplifying the storyline at this point because so many of the people we used to know are actually, really, all-the-way dead now. There's a lot of dead going on. *sigh* Still mad about Bobby, and that was ages ago.

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

I kind of think the show should have ended after season 5 or 6, but that's just me.

You should become a fan of Jim Beaver on facebook, both because he's awesome and because it turns out that's he a fairly serious film historian. He writes big long reviews of classic movies that are always entertaining to read, and he's working on a biography of George Reeves. He's a surprisingly good writer.