#also i'm into your plot rewrite finx

[words-writ-in-starlight]

you know what also pissed me off about supernatural, though? the inability to commit to their own worldbuilding. even while clinging to a static paradigm, where The Masquerade is in full effect, they couldn't be consistent about what sort of underground magic communities do and don't exist. I know this can be blamed on multiple writers and all, but it drives me up the wall. f.ex. witches are All Evil and tend to work alone, until that episode with the familiars when you find a bunch of nice(r)

witches who go to witchbars and hardly ever poison each other’s drinks, oh and also familiars are athing. a while later spike and cordelia are witches who’ve had a tempestuousrelationship for… centuries I think, aka witches can live for a really longtime, so there’s no way the bigger/older ones don't all know each other. thereought to be SOME sort of witch ‘society’, even if it’s just loosecommunication. but no, after this you never hear of witches ever again, muchless familiars or witch

bars. then you’ve gotBela, who caters to rich people who know magical artifacts exist, but there’sno exploration of what that could MEAN – if Bela can hold down a job, thenenough of the country’s elite own and exploit magic stuff that it could –SHOULD – have at least some effect on US politics, as in who gets power.there’s never a whisper of that, but okay, this isn’t exactly the winchesterboys’ social scene. but failing that, some of these magic-obsessed rich peopleshould turn up for a

few episodes, eitherhaunted or else guilty of inflicting a monster-of-the-week on someone. heck,one of them could be a recurring vaguely-helpful character that the boys stopby and menace a bit whenever they need access to some excessively obscureartifact. you already mentioned the mess of all those Alpha Monsters who werepowerful and unkillable and stuff, and had their own dread agendas withpotentially far-reaching consequences for their respective species, and thenjust… vanished. I don’t

even remember how. andthen there’s the hunter community, which is the most inconsistent of all. firstit’s just these two and their dad, and then they start finding out their dad’sold friends were all actually hunters or oracles or whatever. so far so good;these are just Mysteries Of Our Father’s Past, and valid character/plotdevelopment stuff. but there’s Bobby, who Knows Everyone, and Ellen, whose barevery hunter in the country frequents sooner or later, and this means huntersknow each

other, know about eachother, they have a network of communication and they share intel, gossip, tradesecrets. but the moment the bar blows up there’s just no network, noconnection, nothing at all binding hunters together, even though Bobby stillknows everyone and Ellen and Jo are still around and plenty able to found a newbar if they wanted to, or at least keep in touch with at least half of thepeople who used to swing by their bar. oh and also the demons! they talk aboutcomplex politics

happening in Hell, theyhave some sort of prophesied demon queen who takes the body of a young girl andhas glowing white eyes (I don’t even remember what happened to her), they havedemon religion and spirituality to the point where Lucifer is basically DemonJesus – I’m pretty sure this is explicitly stated, Lucifer is to the demonswhat Jesus is to really devout Christians, semi-mythical status and prophesiedsecond coming and everything – and the show makes an effort to flesh out itsdemonic

characters, give thempersonality and desires and drives, and it shows distinct differences in howdifferent demons feel about humanity, and about what they do, and all that. yetdespite all this, the only demon we meet who doesn’t immediately try to murderthe boys is Ruby. no one tries to bargain honestly with the boys, no one butCrowley tries to aim the boys at their own enemies, no one begs for mercy orlies about repentance. nothing. can you imagine if those demons who told Sam totake up

his antichrist mantleand lead a demon army decided that, since their Chosen One was unwilling, theyought to convince him? what if a bunch of demons had started discreetly tailingthe boys, showing up sometimes to rescue them from really bad fights or offerup dead monsters like housecats offering dead birds? ‘hey chosen one, we caughtyou this demon who’s high up in Crowley’s hierarchy, do you want to torture himfor information yourself or do you want us to do it?’ they solemnly swear that

that they’ve stoppedkilling humans, they keep quietly growing in number, and they always scrambefore the boys are conscious enough to kill them properly. sam and dean havemany arguments about whether they were REALLY too concussed to stab theirlatest demonic rescuer and get absurdly angsty and argumentative about it. Iknow my rant has gotten pretty thoroughly disorganized and this is moving backinto must-have-a-static-paradigm territory, but I am a little bitter.

THIS IS ALSO SUCH A GOOD POINT there is just so much to be bitter about with this show, like, good god, you’d think that sooner or later they’d run out of basic narrative rules to fuck up.

Speaking of rules, I think this is a manifestation of one of Supernatural’s wider problems, which is that they just DO NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THE RULES OF THEIR OWN UNIVERSE.  Like, all they’ve REALLY nailed down is that demons can be exorcised, but anything that isn’t a demon is pretty much at the mercy of the plot for A) how powerful it is, B) how hard to kill it is, and C) how ‘human’ it’s considered.  Like, everything from werewolves to wendigos are stated to be at least PART human, but basically their ‘humanness’ and subsequently the amount of sympathy accorded to them is predicated on how benign (or how attractive) they look in their human form.  The magic of this universe is wildly unpredictable--the Winchesters sometimes do/dabble in magic themselves, but we never really learn how magic works.  Does it require a focus?  Does it require badly-pronounced Latin?  Is it an expression of the user’s willpower?  Is it similar to what demons do (implied when All Witches Are Wicked for the first few seasons) or not?  Does it require natural talent or can anyone learn it?  THERE ARE SO MANY QUESTIONS THAT ARE TOTALLY IGNORED.  THEN there’s the question of societies in this supernatural underworld.  Like, I think I’ve expressed in my John Wick comments how much I like functional underworld societies with rules and systems, but honestly it’s CRITICALLY necessary if you’re doing what SPN does and having the society Matter.  I cringe every time I think about how clumsy and slapdash the hunting community was in Supernatural, because it had SO MUCH POTENTIAL, don’t talk to me about it, I made it work better when I wrote my spite novel.  I’m sure I can think of fifty million more incomplete universe rules, but I can honestly feel my blood pressure rising right now so I’m going to stop.

OH MY GOD GUYS, please, if you’re a writer, let me beg you right now in person to figure out the rules of your universe and then commit.  Here are some pointers.

Magic should work in a conceptually similar way to gravity: its rules should be consistent and should be able to be broadly extrapolated from the general effect, and if you’re going to BREAK those rules you’ve got to have a damn fine reason.  

The sliding scale of ‘humannness’ should...slide less, to be completely honest, work your shit the fuck out EARLY or make working your shit the fuck out a plot point (please see Stormdancer for a good example).  

If you’re dealing with questions of what makes someone human (@SPN FOR LIKE FOUR FUCKING SEASONS) then you should actively question like “Hey, my dude, can we morally kill this person for something they have no control over” unless your character took the trait ‘Callous’ somewhere in their history (which is also fine).

If you have an underworld society--or any society tbh???--WORK YOUR SHIT OUT.  How do they work together (ex: hunters pretending to be ‘the boss’ when someone calls the number on that fake business card)?  How do they support each other (ex: safehouses? maybe? this is never discussed in SPN? and I hate it?)?  What are the things people differ on (ex: whether or not to murder the Winchesters, which, like, I know you’re supposed to be against that because they’re the protagonists, but by the time I bailed I def wanted someone to shoot them)?  Is there an assumption of free exchange of favors or is there a strict financial/bargaining system?   How much does one person vouching for another matter in the community?  ANSWER SOME BASIC QUESTIONS FFS

Finally, most crucially, for the love of all that is good, Pick A Plot.  One plot.  It can have subplots (example: an overarching plot broken up by smaller missions, a la your average TV show) or multiple acts (as in a play, where you’ve got a couple major pieces that assemble into the main plot, like Much Ado where you’ve got (roughly) the matchmaking, the wedding, the vengeance, and the resolution), but it should be One Plot and you need to tie up those motherfucking loose ends.

This has been “Hey look turns out that 6K later I have Even More Complaints about Supernatural” with Moran.

#the inevitable supernatural tirade #the graveyard of shows with potential and terrible execution #also i'm into your plot rewrite finx #i'm real into it #it's very similar to my plot rewrite #honestly can we all just agree that this show would be 1000x more interesting if sam had an army #like #please #just let me have a show where someone gets told they're the antichrist and responds with #'cool cool that's the worst thing that's ever happened to me' #'but i'll just take this army of demons off your hands and use it to get my stuff done' #or alternately #'cool cool so turns out i've been pseudo adopted/stalked by ten thousand demons' #'and i can make use of that or just trail them behind me like a toy on a string but they're pretty serious about it' #I'M BITTER #aethersea #asked and answered