#anyways: if you harbor secret fondness for the midwest spn just taps that wellspring it's absolutely nuts guys

[majordemonblockparty]

sometimes watching supernatural feels like the summer I was nineteen and my best friend from high school called me up to tell me that there was construction happening at the convenience store we used to frequent after school and that when they'd ripped up the parking lot to lay a new diesel line, they'd found human bones.

same old story, you've heard it before; sometime in the 80s, two guys beefin' over a girl who neither one ended up marrying, one stabs the other sixteen times in the head, neck, and groin and tucks him away under the rebar and dirt where they're pouring concrete later that week. and then for thirty-plus years after that, people parked their cars over him and sat on the egg-yolk yellow parking blocks to smoke their first (dozen) cigarettes over him and poured tiny airline bottles of vodka bought by soccer moms who wagged their fingers and laughed at underage kids day-drinking, "don't do anything i wouldn't do" into their styrofoam cups of coke over him and nobody knew.

sometimes it feels like that.

like there's something about where and how I grew up that I -- not necessarily forget, but between active suppression when I first left and the relentless passing of time, it gets buried. and then this fucking network tv show comes and rips it right back open.

watching supernatural as somebody who grew up in and around the midwest feels insane. feels all sorts'a unhinged. never have I ever seen popular media treat my childhood playground states like this. the midwest isn't sexy; the midwest isn't cool; and it's not in supernatural, either, but it's... something.

far be it from me to romanticize americana and its role in supernatural (I am not the first and sure as hell won't be the last) but what the fuck. it's so strange to look at these characters and go, "oh. he gets it."

he knows what the liminal space of a car interior feels like on a january day when the roads are covered in dried salt and the fields are blanketed with snow and everything -- everything; the sky, the ground, the road stretched out forever in front of you -- is the exact same shade of pale gray. there's no topography, so there's no horizon; just this endless gray void only broken up by the double-solid yellow line in the road.

he knows how it feels to stand in a gravel turnout and watch the six-day-bruise green of a three-mile-long wall cloud bear down on you. how the air gets heavy and thick-wet enough to drink and you can see lighting way off in the distance, no sound from this far. how if you turn around, the sky over there will still be the most perfect, palest blue,"it's a boy!" birth announcement blue. that it's animal fear that makes your heart pound under your ribs, and birthright that makes you lean back against your car to take in the view. storm's coming and nothing you do is gonna stop it. this is your privilege; soak it in.

he knows what it's like to be cold and stiff and traipsing through woods, following the blood trail of something maybe-still-alive you've tagged in the lung. how lung blood in dead leaves will show up frothy, and so red it almost verges over into pink.

he knows that there's no better place come that inevitable stretch of hundred-degree days in july than in the driver's seat of your own car, windows down and radio cranked so high the frame vibrates under you and a cold drink wedged between your thighs, leaving condensation-wet patches on your jeans, keychain brushing against the (ticklish, but you'd never admit it) skin of your knee where the denim's torn.

he knows to avoid the interstate during migratory bird season; that people are flocking (wahn-wahn) from both coasts and multiple countries to see snow geese, cormorants, cranes, whatever. he knows that the back roads are where you'll see these birds, anyways; scavenging cut-down cornfields that'll be white with gulls and pelicans and terns; sea birds of all sorts, about as fucking far from the sea as you can get, swarming and screaming overhead.

anyways. not an essay, not a love letter, just. some thoughts.

#supernatural meta #she speaks #anyways: if you harbor secret fondness for the midwest spn just taps that wellspring it's absolutely nuts guys #some of this I've said in the tags of other posts before so forgive me if i repeat myself