Supernatural - the legacy

It’s 21st November 2020 and the Supernatural finale happened two days ago. I’m still getting over it, but in order to do that I need to process what happened.

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

Here be SPOILERS for Supernatural - the series finale!

So much to unpack here - the episode itself, the reaction from the ‘fans’, the feeling of knowing it’s over after so long. Let’s start at the beginning.

The Episode

In best SPN tradition, the big ending people thought was going to go down was actually resolved in the penultimate episode. This left one more round of 40 minutes to clear up everything hanging. Would we find out what happened to Castiel, would we see Jack again, would we find that monsters and demons and angels and everyone else - were they gone now? Cleared up by Jack reverse-Thanos’ing everyone back into existence? Were the other universes brought back too? AU!Charlie and AU!Bobby - were they back as they were? I hope so.

It seemed that Castiel really was gone - as was Death. Of course the next reaper would become the new Death so that would take care of people on Earth. Sounds like Castiel tinkered quite a bit with Heaven and its inhabitants, causing rebellion, sedition, incitement to tear down walls and have a peaceful Heaven as it should have been. From what Bobby said Jack apparently visited, set some things straight, changed Heaven from a place where you relive your greatest moments into a place where you can make new moments. Logically his would imply a new kind of life - an afterlife of new moments, made outside of normal Earth time. So everyone up there - and Bobby made sure Dean knew his parents weren’t far away - may be gone from Earth, but they’re still going. If Heaven is perfect and you have everything you could ever want, it sounds like the perfect ending.

As long as Dean doesn’t get bored of the easy life.

We see Sam’s life after Dean and it’s a good one. Briefly told in quick flashes, the only weird thing is that we never see his wife. Would it have hurt to add in someone from a previous series that he goes back for, and stays with? But he raises his own Dean, and the circle is complete. Dean raised Sam, so Sam raises a Dean. And when Sam finally goes too, there he is, right back next to his brother. Even the Impala made it - or did it? Was it just something Dean would have wanted, and it therefore appeared (with the original number plates), or did it take on enough of an imprint from its owners that it became its own thing, and was rewarded by getting to an afterlife? People will argue about this for the next fifteen years, I’m sure.

But Dean called it - like he always does. When he told Zachariah he’d ‘stab him in his face’, and then seasons later he did just that. When he said he didn’t shoot the deputy, and seasons later he did just that. When he told Sam his perfect happy ending would be Dean having died relatively quick and bloody in some average fight, causing Sam to leave The Life, have a family, and end up dying old and loved - he did just that, and Sam did just that. It was a good ending, the kind of thing I could see happening. Dean got what he wanted, after all the fighting and arguing and fallings-out and raging against the being who put them all through it. He got what he wanted. And after everything, it came back to just Sam and Dean. And I’m ok with that.

The Reaction from the ‘Fans’

It seems a lot of people were not ok with that. Twitter, tumblr, social media in general - the fall-out from the episode was horrific. At time of writing, I am ashamed of the way some of the ‘fans’ have treated the cast and crew who gave us fifteen years of a show that wasn’t pegged to last more than one. While outpourings of love, of loss, of grief and thanks overflowed between the final filming day and the moments before the finale aired, as soon as it ended it was a different story. People ranted, they swore, they sent tweets to cast and crew saying how the ending was shit, how it was stupid and didn’t make sense, how it ‘ruined’ everything, how it wrote off relationships. Ugly, ugly responses indeed considering the source material and how the fandom has been mostly supportive up to this point. I don’t understand how you can turn on something so quickly, so completely, after hungrily devouring everything given to you in the past fifteen years. Some people have fallen out of love with the show gradually, some have fallen by the wayside, and some have just plain given up with it, and I get that. I gladly cut ties with Doctor Who after the way they wrote Peter Capaldi’s first two episodes made me realise the showrunner was a complete and utter self-centred prick who thought racist digs and jokes about sentient beings burning to death in front of them were ok to air. I gave the show with Jodie Whittaker another chance, since the showrunner had been booted for losing 40% of its ratings. (It’s ok, but it’s not the Christopher Eccleston / David Tennant years.)

What I’m saying is, I understand how people can go off a show and walk away. What I don’t understand it how they can continue to watch it if they don’t like it - why do that to yourself? Why torture yourself by making yourself follow a show you actively despise? Just walk away and leave it, go find something else you do like. Unfortunately, that’s a thing with many shows these days - people on social media are only too happy to leave comments saying how bad something is and that no-one should watch it. I reply to these people now, where I used to ignore them. “Then go watch something that makes you happy”, “then stop watching”, “you don’t have to watch it”, “take control of your life and stop watching if it makes you unhappy”, etc. I get backlash but I literally do not care. Someone has to make the point that no-one welcomes a step-by-step account of how they’re still torturing themselves by posting and commenting about something they profess to hate. I get that “sad is happy for deep people”, but behaviour like that toward people who are still enjoying something is just bollocks and they need to fuck right off and leave others to enjoy something they don’t. It’s everywhere in and out of fandom right now and it needs to die a horrible bloody death as soon as possible.

There seems to be a lot of ‘fans’ chucking their toys out of their respective prams because they didn’t get the ending they wanted. It’s childish and it’s so bloody entitled I don’t even know where to start. Yes I do - these are the kind of people who started or signed an actual real petition to try to get someone to re-write the ending of Game of Thrones because they didn’t like it. How bloody self-centred do you have to be to genuinely believe that just because you didn’t think it measured up, that you get to demand it be redone to be somehow ‘better’? How entitled are you? How far are you up your own arse? Someone wrote that and someone helped edit it. People produced and filmed and costumed and catered and rigged and lit and worked bloody hard to bring it to the screen. And what happened? People turned around and shat on everyone because they didn’t get the death they wanted, or the fight they wanted, or the satisfaction they craved. As Bobby says, “boo-friggin’-hoo”. It wasn’t made for just you - sometimes you just don’t get what you want and you have to step back and let it go. If someone gives you a birthday present and you open it in front of them to find that it’s not what you want or even like, you don’t throw it at them and insult them for it, you accept it and say thank you because that person made an effort. You don’t have to like the present, but you should have the fucking manners and self-respect to thank them and move on. No-one’s asking you to keep the present, or to tell everyone you like it - you don’t have to say you don’t like it, and everything is fine. It amazing how many people just cannot grasp that simple concept.

It’s not the way I wanted the show to go out. It’s not the way I want the cast and crew to be treated. It’s not how a fandom should behave. It’s beneath us and it’s ugly. I am ashamed of the fandom and how they’ve acted - and are still acting. To preserve my own sanity in these trying times of Covid and global madness, I can only conclude that these people are not fans. It’s not much, but it’s something.

The End

On top of all that shitshow, there’s the knowledge that this is The End. No more new episodes. No more new adventures. No more sounds of the Impala’s doors squeaking, that little rattle it made just under the dialogue. No more witty comebacks, slip-ups, dressing-downs, bitch fights, machetes, desperate Hail Marys, strained allegiances and tested friendships.

As I look back over the past fifteen years, at all the fun I’ve had at conventions, writing forums, rewatch parties, it brings happy tears to my eyes. I must be getting old. But those were good times - all of them, even the badly-run Rogue Events conventions, the arguments about spelling on those writing forums, the mismatched time zones during those rewatches. A bad day with Supernatural was better than some of my good days, for so many reasons. It was comfort, it was ease, it was familiarity. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a convention; you need to mortgage most of your organs to be able to afford a ticket to a Creation con these days, before paying for hotels and flights. It’s been a long time since I’ve been part of a writing forum; these days it’s all Wordpress and AOOO but it means it’s fragmented, it’s so open and wide-ranging that it’s no longer our corner of the internet. Instead of one person curating an archive of all the best we have to offer, now it’s just a filter on AOOO. This is not a bad thing, it’s just how things change. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a rewatch; those people aren’t available any more, or their time zone is now even further from mine. The pack has broken up, the people scattered over the globe in a way that only time can do. So gradually that no-one noticed, it all became so spread out, so far between that it wasn’t until I tried to get in touch with people that I realised it was too late.

Where are you when I need you, Hell Bus?

But then I realise: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Yes, the show will have no new episodes. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be conventions till the whole platform itself ceases to be a thing. We still have social media and groups, niche follows and tags. We still have AOOO and FF dot net, Wordpress and Wattpad. It feels like we’ve gone into our fifteenth hiatus, only this time there’s no end date in sight.

That’s the most encouraging thing I think I’ve heard since I watched the finale.

And I think that’s all I’ve got. It’s wet, it’s windy, it’s 12 degrees C and we’re into day 250 since my part of the world went into a Covid spiral of working from home / Tier 3 / national lockdown. However, I have a lot of memories and good times to think about, and I choose to do that rather than focus on the arseholes who have made a dumpster fire out of the series finale. I’m opening my SPN playlist and playing it loud.

Take care, everyone.

Stranger (비밀의 숲) - seasons 1 and 2

Lockdown 2.0 has us all confined to places we probably don’t want to be, at least for some of the time. Netflix has provided a plethora of stuff to watch, not least of all the stellar Kingdom (킹덤), the Korean imperial zombie horror / thriller that was a solid 9/10 for me. Great ideas, plot twists and proper full-on zombies, the whole two seasons were a blast that I couldn’t stop watching.

On the back of that Netflix recommended another Korean drama to me; Stranger (비밀의 숲) from 2017. Full of award-winning power houses from South Korea’s acting best of the best, and written by someone who enjoys torturing viewers with proper mysteries, I was hooked by the end of the first episode. The characters are new to me, fun to guess at, brilliant to get to know. The budget, the production, the whole thing is a different flavour of thriller than the sometimes plodding or predictable American and British fare that I’m used to. It differs again from the Hong Kong dramas of the day, and even from the Taiwan crime dramas I’ve seen.

You know that old adage, “you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all”? I feel like that with a lot of American stuff; there’s only so many times you can watch the straight white dude win in the end just because he’s the ‘good guy’. I needed something different, and Kingdom was my second foray into Korean drama. (Full disclosure; my first was Suspicious Partners [수상한 파트너], which was all love story all the time and that’s not my thing. I gave up on it after a few episodes.) It turned out to be a gateway to twisty-turny mysteries, where they don’t waste time building up to something only to find that there’s one mild twist at the end. Instead you get logical paths answered in one or two episodes instead of five or six, and then you get a twist that sets you off on a different path. It’s fun, it’s new - and while everyone in South Korea or the rest of the K-drama world will think this particular series is nothing new, it’s new to me, and I’m having fun discovering a whole new genre.

Kingdom was my primer. Stranger has been, for me, the ultimate game of Cluedo - after you determine what the root crime is about that kicks off everything to follow. It’s clever, it’s full-on, it’s fascinating. We have political intrigue where people are trying to one-up each other, jockeying for positions they covet in police and prosecutors’ offices. We have personal dilemmas, where employees have to think very carefully about what they are doing by opening up cans of worms. We have chains of events kept in motion by people unknown, until it all finally comes out. Strap yourselves in for a long, slow burn of many twists and satisfying discoveries: keeping all these plates in the air at all times is the amazing cast of characters.

It would be remiss of me not to mention how big the stars are behind this series. While they are heavyweights in the movie world they also appear in TV dramas, mostly to keep themselves paid, like every actor. We have big names here, totally unknown to me except that they bring so much life to the characters I found myself picking favourites within the first ten minutes of air time. The way the characters come over, bit by bit, layer by layer, revealed only by their interactions with everyone else serving their own ulterior motives, kept me glued to the subtitles. So who are these people?

We are presented with two main characters, who I attached to very quickly. The first is Lieutenant Han Yeo-Jin, a police officer with the tenacity of a ratting terrier but the heart of someone who knows what it’s like to be on the outside due to the cruelty of others outside your control. Played with brilliant flair by Bae Doona, she is a stark contrast to the prosecutors we meet. Her police colleagues are half with her and half against, not really understanding her. Her one true friend, Jang Geon, is a great detective but needs her guidance in navigating the structure of the police force. She doesn’t seem to care for all that on the surface, although she sees it going on. She dresses in brighter colours than everyone else, she draws little cartoons of people or things she thinks about, she is lively, animated, fun and probably too much sunshine for her colleagues on some days.

Her counterpart in being devoted to truth and tracking it down works in the prosecutor’s office, not historically a place where alliances with police are welcome. Prosecutor Hwang Si-Mok is diligent, effective, sharp as a knife and equally as dangerous as he refuses to take part in office politics, agendas or camps. Partly the reason for this, and the wrinkle that keeps this whole drama ticking toward its conclusion to well, is the surgery he had to go through as a teen. A problem with some part of his brain caused incalculable pain as he got older, something to do with loud noises or certain frequencies (I guess like a severe attack of super-concentrated tinnitus). In order for him to live something like a normal life, he undergoes a partial lobotomy. This causes him to lose empathy and other most emotions. He is now a model prosecutor, just as intended - he has no sentiment, no pesky emotions getting in the way of his duty to finding the truth and bringing it to court with winning cases. He appears dour, uninterested in small talk or social niceties other than what protocol demands, and is totally aloof from life in general. He should be a boring character - but a wonderful portrayal by Cho Seung-Woo makes him fascinating to watch, where every micro-expression carries more weight than anyone else’s emotion.

Enter Lieutenant Han. Over the next 16 episodes she will bully Hwang into acknowledging that he has sporadic attacks and it’s physically painful enough to render him unconscious. She will bully him into accepting her little sketches of him, of how his brain should be slowly filling back up with emotional control since the surgery, how there is hope of him not turning out totally alone for the rest of his life. And she does all this by smiling at him, speaking to him like a human being, treating him carefully rather than being harsh with him and using the clenched jaws and dirty scowls the men in his office direct at him for being different.

Between them they will uncover everything that’s going down, sharing things on the quiet, working out theories and reasons and motives over ramen, text messages, shared looks. By the time we get to the conclusion, their very quiet, understated teamwork will be legend. And for good reason - they are a force to be reckoned with, one with the determination to see it through because you uncover the truth to prevent further harm, to stop people being hurt, and the other determined to get to the truth because it’s the right thing to do and who cares about privilege and people thinking they can get away with anything because they’re your senior?

I’m not going to lie, this was epic for me. Two people getting to the resolution through different means and being Team Awesome despite everyone’s complete disdain and disapproval? Totally platonic BFFs who don’t even know they’re BFFs, taking down anyone who’s connected to the whole sordid case? I’m in.

And let’s not forget the supporting cast - we have magnificent cockroach Seo Dong-Jae, who is doing his best to kiss the right arse at the right time in order to secure promotion. He is a focal point and so important to everything that goes down, and I enjoy watching him attempting to insert himself into the lives of strategically important people. The way he gets himself into scrapes and then manages to get out again by falling into a bigger one is epic and is a fascinating juxtaposition to what everyone else is up to. He could not be any more opposite to Hwang Si-Mok in every way; he’s loud, he’s brash, he’s immaculately dressed and perfectly coiffed at all times. He’s confident in his ability to come out on top at everything… until he doesn’t. Lee Joon-Hyuk is so good in this role it’s like he was born for it.

With season one done, I had to find more stuff to occupy me - and then it turns out there’s a season two.

Ok, if I thought season one was good with the plot twists and the fun friends shenanigans, then ai-yah I was naïve. Season two is like season one on steroids. Honestly, it’s great stuff and it covers so much more than season one. The writer has said that she has enough for five seasons, and I for one hope that’s a promise. Season two gave us separation, personal discovery, deep dives into office politics and best of all, the most epic Hwang/Han shipping we could ask for. Still Team Awesome once they hit their stride, him letting her help in times of dire vulnerability when he spends his life covering it up, him going over everyone’s heads to step in for her without her knowledge but only when she needed it - everything I could have asked for, and especially as it’s without all that boring romance shit.

The final scene made me grin uncontrollably at the way certain characters were coming to terms with things, and although it ended in a frustrating way, I have heard there may be a season three some time in the next two years.

Just about time for me to move onto new dramas, miss these two seasons, and then go back and watch them all again.

Perfect.

With Friends Like These

Done some writing. I blame this on Covid nights and having Green Hornet (2011) on repeat due to its feel-good factor, cheap vodka and equally cheap pork scratchings.

Ladies, gentlemen, boths and neithers, I give you:

Title: With Friends Like These

Rated T for injury details, naughty words, fights and semi-nudity (not my fault).

Summary:

Dealing with the aftermath of the movie, new drug dealers, trust issues, new District Attorneys, undercover work, phobias and weaknesses, dating co-workers, how to be friends; it would all be so much easier if Britt and Kato could just get along. Even oil and water can mix temporarily, right?

Disclaimer: 

I do not own any Green Hornet characters, names, likenesses or the suggestion thereof. This is all for fun, not for profit. Unless you add me to any favourites lists or leave reviews/comments - then I get to smile. Linky-link-link: here at An Archive of Our Own under my name TozaBoma (which is where we collectively won a Hugo Award last year) and here at Fanfiction dot net under my name Mardy Lass.

If you even visit the page, I thank you.