In which I talk back to Papa Winchester. (SPN S1, episodes 1-10)

[rsadelle]

norwich36 very kindly loaned me Supernatural season 1. I'm in the process of mainlining it, and I'm through episode 10. I half-heartedly thought about liveblogging the pilot, but instead sent only a couple of observations on to other people, which I will reproduce for you here (spoiler-free; I promise to put spoilery things behind a cut):

• JDM is only hot with stubble. (norwich36 said also with a beard. Later in the season he shows up with a beard, and I said, "No. Still only with stubble.")
• I had no idea this was a McG production. You may have some idea about how much I loved The O.C., which will let you realize that this actually means something to me.
• Jared's voice was somehow not what I was expecting. I can't be more specific because I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting.

Nora warned me that it was a women in refrigerators sort of show, which, uh, yeah. Apparently if you're an actress and you want to be on this show, the main criterion is that you be able to scream.

If you find the show scary but you like the concept of Sam and Dean, you can always watch the last five minutes of each episode, wherein the woman they've saved kisses Dean (usually) on the cheek and then Sam and Dean have a nice bonding moment in the car on their way out of town. (Be forewarned that you may occasionally be distracted from their bonding by the bad greenscreen work.)

One of the things I really like about the show is the way they acknowledge their debt to The X-Files. I dislike the way they're idiots about some things, but then Scully was always going down into a dark basement in heels with no lights.

All of this babble is to make it seem like I have more to say than I really do. What I really came here to say are the following two things:

1. Talking back to Papa Winchester.
At the end of "Home," Papa Winchester says that he can't talk to his kids yet. "Not until I know the truth." You have to understand that when I say I was talking back to him, I was actually talking out loud in the middle of my empty living room. Here's what I said: "The truth is your kid is strong and some of us got that in the first freakin' episode." Well, sort of. They put baby Sammy to bed and he amuses himself by making his mobile spin, and then there's evil, and I thought, okay, maybe the mobile spinning is part of the weirdness that's making everything else go haywire. But now that we know Sam has power, I'm back to thinking baby Sammy was entertaining himself. (Also, in the college RPG AU I read, they have a LARP in which Jared and Jensen play Sam and Dean. One of the other characters implies things about Sam. He turns out to be something else, but my first thought was witch, which is probably part of what helped me along to noticing Sam's power in the first episode.) I've been enjoying the monster of the week thing, but now that I have a handle on the characters, it's like, "Okay, okay. Get to the mytharc already, and don't be like Burn Notice where they just tack five minutes of mytharc onto the end of each episode."

2. I think I can read SPN fic now.
I think I have enough of the handle on the characters now (although the mytharc in my head may not end up being the real mytharc) that I can read fic without it messing with my experience of the show, but only if there are no spoilers for things I haven't seen yet. On the other hand, I'm really enjoying Sam and Dean as non-sexual brothers, so while I don't object to incest fic on principle, you might have to talk me into the Wincest.

norwich36 said there's lots of SPN mpreg. My guess would be that Sam's the one pregnant in a lot of them. Personally, I'd rather see Dean pregnant. You know he'd be the crankiest pregnant man ever. Actually, what I'd really like to see is Dean pregnant and Sam having to deal with him and it not being Wincest.

Comments

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

Ok, you are simply wrong about JDM with facial hair, as my icon demonstrates. :P

I can see I'm going to have to loan you season 2 by the end of the week!

I don't know that I said there's a lot of SPN mpreg; I think what I actually said was that there was a lot more SPN mpreg than J2 mpreg. Here's a list of recs, though I haven't read most of these, so I can't vouch for the stories. I do know that estrella, amara, lyra wing, poisontaster and fleshflutter are all excellent authors in general, though be warned that the fleshflutter story, which I *have* read, is a bizarre crossover with H.P. Lovecraft, and is definitely NOT a fluffy story. Nor is the story by dreamlittleyo, which I remember being generally good but awfully depressing. It also seems to me there is at least one Dean-pregnant-with-demon-spawn story that was mentioned as a panel at the last Escapade; if I think of it I will try to track it down.
Here's the list, anyway: http://wendy.livejournal.com/1475686.html

Damn

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

The Dean-pregnant-with-demon-spawn story, which was *really* good, is the one by sardonicsmiley in the above list, but alas it seems to have been taken offline.

spoiler-free fic

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

There are some major events at the end of season 1 and through season 2 you may not want to be spoiled for, so you may be interested in this comm that does episode-related fic, broken down by season: http://community.livejournal.com/spn_epific/31488.html#cutid1

Gen recs: places to look

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

You are in luck that there is a ton of good gen in this fandom. And since I know that you like the big plotty stuff, the obvious starting point is big_pink who writes these amazing long gen sagas, many of which are set pre-series so no big spoilers. The very first SPN story I read (at least that I can recall) was her story Red (http://big-pink.livejournal.com/16952.html), an epic tale about Sam and Dean going undercover (one as a logger, one as a forest defender--you can guess who is who) to uncover a monster in the woods in the Pacific Northwest--only it turns out that the monster is something that almost got Dean years before. No actual series spoilers, as far as I remember.

I have a ton of gen SPN recs here (http://delicious.com/search?context=userposts&p=SPN%20%20%2B%20gen&lc=1&u=norwich36), though I don't honestly know how good a job I do labelling which ones are spoilery for different seasons. But since at the rate you're going the spoiler issue will soon become moot, that's one place to start.

The two best SPN reccers, in my experience anyway, are esorecs (http://delicious.com/esorecs) and musesfool's recs, which are here (http://delicious.com/victoria.p). Musesfool in particular recs a lot of gen, though I see she doesn't necessarily tag it that way.

It took me a fair bit of time before I could read Wincest that didn't have a lot of setup/explanation, and there's still a substantial chunk of the fandom that doesn't read it, so in addition to a lot of gen there's a fair bit of het. (I have a pretty decent number of Sam/Jess stories tagged--if you want I can let you know what the really good ones are out of my delicious links. There's also a lot of good Dean/Faith stories (Faith from BTVS), though I can't rec you my all-time favorite SPN/Buffy crossover until you finish season 2.

(You will be happy to note, I'm sure, though I haven't actually exhausted my "bearded JDM" icons, I can't use the last one yet because now you have enough show context that it might be spoilery.)