Eric Kripke Endorses Remix. Also possibly Yuletide

[lunabee34]

Y'all I am sick. Bad sick. I have been using AN INHALER!!! My mouth tastes like Aqua Net. I have been drinking cough syrup (that is BANANA FLAVORED WTF?) into which my pharmacist has clearly ground seventy million Lortab. Poorly. Yum, crunchy.

And yet, I must post, as sickly and weak and *cough cough* miserable as I am because

WTF, SPN FANDOM?

It has come to my attention (although I have not yet gone to read the primary texts, as it were) that the latest episode of SPN, "The Monster at the End of the Book," has made a certain segment of SPN fandom very, very upset.

I do not understand this. At all. Although perhaps it is because I am drunk on codeine. *shrugs*



This is the episode about US, people. And I'm not talking about Sam and Dean acknowledging fanfiction and reader-response to their lives and slash and Wincest (although, dude? Pretty fricking sweet. And if Dean saying ew to Wincest has your panties in a twist, grow up, sweetpea. What did you expect him to say on network TV? He didn't say, "Ew, fanfic," or "Ew, same sex." He said, "Ew to do the Dew with you, Sammy." If we cannot work around this one utterance by Dean about the potential of having sex with his brother, then WE HAVE FAILED, OH FANDOM. FAILED IN OUR VERY MISSION. WHICH IS TAKING SHOW, WHATEVER IT MAY BE, AND GIVING THE WORLD MORE OF OR MORE FROM (thank you, Democratic Genre). I think that pretty much every single piece of SPN fanfic I've ever written can survive intact no matter what Dean said in this episode. It took him three seconds to say. And then it was done. It wasn't belabored and I don't think it was dismissive either. I think it was the only real avenue for the show to publicly acknowledge what a preponderance of its internet fans are doing without ending up a segment on Fox News. "We know what you kids are doing" *wink wink* "and we can't say it's cool because, dude, incest, but soldier on fans. Soldier on."

So yes. Not that.

This episode is about Chuck, the writer. He doesn't make things happen. No. Kripke God does that. But Chuck gets the words. The beautiful, heartrending, funny, scary words. What's happened (canon) has happened, but he chooses the words that describe it. He gets to take the bare bones of Sam and Dean's lives and he gets to build that animal, sentence by sentence, until it is whole.

He also speaks very cogently to the damage we put the characters we love through. "The beatings alone," Chuck says. And YES! It's worth a moment's pause to consider what we as writers inflict on the bodies and the psyches of the characters we write. This is layered, really fricking layered, meta-commentary, the kind I expect to see executrix writing.

And for forty minutes, y'all, *we* were written into the story. We were characters, right alongside Chuck. Like him, we are helpless to stop what is coming, what Kripke or Gamble or whoever will write. We're just along for the ride and trying our best to fix (or elaborate or merely extend) whatever the PTB may throw our boys' way.

I think this was one of the most loving episodes I have ever seen directed towards fans. That publisher that Sam and Dean press for Edlund's real identity? She put her finger right on the pulse of it, my friend. What gets us in the gut about this show, about *our boys* (and has any television character ever spoken truer?)--their self-sacrifice, their loss, their bravery, the WAY THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO FUCKING MUCH!!!!!!!!!! She is us, with our dogeared copies of the SPN comics and all of destina's fic saved to our hard drives and the little Impala we've been knitting in the empty hours when SGA would have aired. This woman is not poking fun at us. She is grinning at us and crooking her finger and saying, "So what song do you think they should use next? I'm leaning towards 'Killer Queen.'"

So, finally, for my subject line. This episode reminded me so much of what Remix is all about. The way we as remixers take what's there (whether it's canon or fanfic) and we rail against it in a multiplicity of ways. We park the Impala and we take Sammy's laptop and we order the tofu burger and in the end, it's a Hail Mary. We close our eyes and we take it on faith and we write ourselves a new goddamned ending (*totally kissing Castiel right now*) and it *works*. We circumvent TPTB. We have the power. (There is even a Remix fic written by wisdomeagle with the same title as this episode, all about the complicity of fandom with the pain of the characters it adores and the power we have (or don't) to control their fates. It is, frankly, awesome.)

But like Chuck, we're a closed circuit. We can't affect canon. We can't save Sam and Dean, not for real, no matter how hard we try. The metaphor is excellent, my friends and it is love. I am so damned surprised that anyone has read it as anything other than such.


Long. Long. Those deer you see are hmmmmmmmmmmmm....... teal?

*hack hack*

Was that a double entendre?

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you're sick! And thanks for the namecheck, but as you know I am not an SPN-ista, and when I heard about the episode, I thought it sounded just too cutesy.

I started doing the research for you-know-what, BTW.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Yay! Research. :)

And you're always my go-to gal for thinky thoughts. :)

[imaginaryimages.livejournal.com]

I thought the premise sounded a little too cute as well. I'll just say I was COMPLETELY wrong. Sure, it was funny, then it got pretty darn dark, mythic and foreboding. Turns out this is own of my favorite episodes ever. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.

[tabaqui]

Yes, my derio, yes yes and fucking yes. The people who are all grumpy and whiny about this make me wanna smack 'em. Kripke is giggling and grinning and saying 'i seeeeeeeeee you!! omg!!' and he's saying he hears us, too. Hears us, agrees with us in some instances *Red Dawn sucked* and loves that we love his boys.

I have nothing but glee and admiration for this ep.

And, AND. Chuck and Sam talking, and 'you gotta know that's wrong', and Sam insisting it's not about power and him being in charge, and Dean demanding help, and Castiel edging just a little closer to a fall, and 'we'll just bring you back to life' and.....omfg.

So good. So awesome. So fun. So perfect. Nothing. But. Glee.
:)

*i am also sick. Gods. just started late last night.*
*haaaaaaaaaaates*

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Nobody on my flist wanked and I didn't realize there was any until Sue posted about it and then Ariadne sent me the fandom_wank link.

*guffaws*

*hands out tissues*

I hope you get better soon, dear heart

[tabaqui]

Insane wank is insane.

*takes all the tissues there are*

OMG, headcold.
Haaaaaaaaaate.

[altyronsmaker.livejournal.com]

this post is LOVE! And I LOVE you for it. Thanks for summing up the rampaging, pissed off thoughts that have been beating against each other in my head until all I was left with were incoherent words. This makes sense. This is what was meant by the whole episode, and I bet, if Kripke, Carver, or Edlund were to read this, they would be nodding their heads, smiling and wanting to find out who you were so they could thank you for expressing what their intentions were.

You. So effin'. Rock, right now. Thanks!

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Oh, yay! I'm glad this makes sense to people who are Not Me.

*big grin*

;)

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I loved this episode so much. It was pretty much my favorite SPN episode ever, and I'm normally much more a fan of the monster of the week stuff than mytharc, but this was just so hilarious.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Oh, me too. This goes in my top five SPN of all time. I can't wait to see where they're going next with the show.

[crazydiamondsue.livejournal.com]

I'll write a "Hell yeah" comment to your post later, just wanted to note that I believe your "cold" is a mere ruse to subvert Lent. *hack hack* I gave up sarcasm. Whoops! Speaking of, kind of, I got to see my little Kyan (god son?) sing for Palm Sunday this morning. Cuteness factor massive.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Heeeeeeeeeeeee.

I subverted Lent long ago, alas. I made it almost a whole month and then I was all, "Sorry, Baby Jesus, but Mama needs her wine."

[ariadne83]

Sucks that you're sick.

BUT. OMG I loved this episode so fricking much. I even watched the whole thing, which is a first for me.

And yeah - that publisher girl was so protective of her boys writer. There was no way in hell she was willing to expose him to ridicule. So. Much. Love.

I mean, just for Castiel's wink-wink-nudge-nudge "I'll help you by telling you exactly how I can't help you" Kripke gets balloons and streamers and sparkles.

Such a smart episode.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Castiel just gets better and better and better and better.

Such a great character. :)

I love that you are being inexorably drawn into SPN. Come over to the dark side, my dear. We've got all the best seats in the special hell.

[ariadne83]

We've got all the best seats in the special hell.

No doubt, between the brother incest and the Daddy incest *shakes head* No, I haven't spent the entire afternoon reading dark SPN fic, why do you ask?

[spikedluv]

Thank you for this! There has been mostly love on my f-list (with a few, "they're laughing AT us, not with us" voices), but this is the most understandable and detailed explanation of why it was all love and they really were laughing with us. ♥

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm glad you think so. I just had so much love for the episode that I got very shocked that others did not.

Probably a good many spoilers in my comments below...

[imaginaryimages.livejournal.com]

I think you said it perfectly (despite the codeine!). And even if Kripke and Co. are poking a little fun at the fans, lighten up people! I was blown away by the course the episode took. I thought it WAS going to be a monster of the week. I was SOOOO wrong and glad I was. I absolutely loved how this ep fit into the mythos.

I also agree they were very specific in Dean's comments. Joking about his own full frontal was priceless. You were also right in that they did not belabor the point. To me it was a hilarious bit of exposition by showing how naive Dean was in that Sam had to explain what Slash was to him. All of which made for a wonderfully uncomfortable moment for them both. I also loved how the "porny" subtext circled back around when Dean practically ordered Sam to watch Casa-Eroctica III and calls it "normal."

Some of my favorite parts were Chuck admitting the suckiness of his own writing even as he's thinking what happens to Sam and Dean is of his own doing/creating. So, any Naysayers (is that even a word) need to shut the F up. Kripke and his gang were poking fun at themselves just as much as anything, if not MORE so. I mean, the publisher went bankrupt!

yep, we can't change the boys' fates and apparently, neither can they! A very scary bit of foreshadowing at the end!

I'm also looking forward to things as we gear up for the end of the season. What are the repercussions going to be for Sam since he realized he wasn't strong enough to do what he thought he could do. Did you notice that this is the second time in a short while where Sam is left sitting there looking a bit shell-shocked after the climax (Sex and Violence) and then in the closer scene is trying a little too hard to explain things? I think there's still a lost little brother in there. Here's hoping Dean can get that little brother back again!

Hope you're feeling better soon!

Re: Probably a good many spoilers in my comments below...

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Some of my favorite parts were Chuck admitting the suckiness of his own writing even as he's thinking what happens to Sam and Dean is of his own doing/creating. So, any Naysayers (is that even a word) need to shut the F up. Kripke and his gang were poking fun at themselves just as much as anything, if not MORE so. I mean, the publisher went bankrupt!

*nods frantically*

yep, we can't change the boys' fates and apparently, neither can they! A very scary bit of foreshadowing at the end!

I'm not sure I agree with you, though, on this point. I think that the reason that Chuck can't contact them about what he's seen is precisely because Sam and Dean *can* change what's going to happen and for whatever reason, the angels don't want them to. I think Dean and Cas did circumvent on high. Chuck hadn't written that bit with the archangel.

If anybody can get Sammy back it's Dean!!!!!!

Re: Probably a good many spoilers in my comments below...

[imaginaryimages.livejournal.com]

Very true. I was actually rethinking that myself earlier this morning after I re-watched the episode. You would think the Angels would learn that the harder you try to push the boys in one direction, it may just backfire on you. Sam and Dean have outsmarted the Angels more than once already. I think the result of the Angels trying so hard to convince them they have no course but what's set before them is going to be Dean teaching Cas just what doubt is.

Also, I was thinking about what Chuck "thought" he saw Sam and Lilith doing, but he can only interpret what he sees in the context that he sees it. If he sees big ole Sam laying Lilith down on the bed, he's going to assume certain things. In reality, when Chuck and Dean arrived that was SO not what was happening and Sam didn't (or said he didn't) intend to follow through. So, while Chuck may be what he is, he is also only a man with man's failings.

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

I thought it was rather cool, and not at all dismissive of the fans. I'm not a Wincest fan, as you know - just had a brill convo with tabaqui about this very subject - but why can't people just chill, settle down, take it easy? There was no intention to offend anyone, that I could see. It was all for a laugh. It's fiction! Very good fiction, but not life-changing.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*nods*

The things that some people will wank about is astounding. LOL

Heeeeee.

[crevanfox.livejournal.com]

I was laughing and yelling "yes! the meta! Oh dear God the meta!" through that scene. I love it when shows take a poke at the fourth wall. I agree whole heartedly with this posting.

Wincest, admittedly creeps me out, so maybe I'm not as sensitive to the needs of the people who read and write it, but you were right on the nose. The show acknowledged it, in a cheeky way, without ragging on the fans, in really the only way open to them.

P.S. Illness sucks. Maybe s part of the apocalypse the Winchester boys can take on pestilence?

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Oh gods yes. Saved from pnuemonia by Sam and Dean.

*fist pump of victory*

I'd catch this all over again. Heeeeeeeeeee.

[chocgood84.livejournal.com]

Deep. Very, very deep. And lovely:P

Sorry you're feeling well, hon, hope it passes quickly!

*smooch*

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Thank you my Bradling. I hope that tomorrow I will awaken refreshed and rejuvenated. Or else, just less sick. LOL