#so one of them can hook up with the other main character who we've spent years establishing is not a good match for her'

[thephoenixandthecrocodile]

Forgiveness

I've been rewatching Fringe (which is still a really good show btw) and I think one of the reasons I love it is the main theme of forgiveness and being held accountable.

Walter Bishop is a terrible man who did terrible things for a son he never truly loved until it was too late and, season 2 in particular, does a great job exploring what that means for him and the world and doesn't let him off the hook just because he went through so much shit later in life. I think John Noble does a great job making Walter vulnerable and likeable but he also never lets you forget who this man was and what he is capable of. And the show never lets you forget that all the horror we've seen in this world, all the trauma Olivia and the other cortaxiphan children went through, all the lost Peter experienced was because of Walter. And yet can you truly blame him when it was his son's life on the line? What would you have done to save your own child if you had the ability to literally break or bend the laws of physics at your whim? The season later tries to redeem him somewhat with Bell's manipulation of him and his work, but at the same time the fateful decision to rip the fabric of the universe apart, jeopardizing both universes, to save his son was his choice and his choice alone.

Surprisingly, these themes of forgiveness and doing the unforgivable for your loved ones is cropping up a lot in the Demon book. I have former warlords, assassins, and priests who did terrible and unforgivable things to other characters or to whole groups of people who don't really see the error of their ways until the table is turned on them and it becomes a question of how much grace should be extended to them? How much forgiveness? What do they have to do to earn forgiveness? Can they ever truly redeem themselves? Do we as readers want them to?

I also have characters who show kindness and mercy to Demons, the worst beings in my world, beings that God himself marked for death. They are willing to, not only die, but betray God himself for their Demon friends because what do God's commandments mean when the people you love have been marked for extermination?

What does it matter what the Church believes when you have scientific evidence that the very beings "damned by God" are actually sick and can be treated? Would you dismantle all of the Church's lies if it meant the people you loved no longer feared for their lives and could get the care they needed? Would you reveal the truth if it had the potential to destroy the world as you knew it? If it meant starting a world war because the Church and many world leaders would rather risk war then admit that they were wrong and had spent centuries persecuting people they should have been helping?

#my writing #writblr #demon book #fringe #queer writer #forgiveness #doing the unforgivable for the people you love

[fuckspn]

i really can’t get over the plan for the band kansas to appear in the supernatural finale. like obviously it’s hilarious because it means this show killed an entire band canonically but also it’s just. such a clear signal that the writers/producers were viewing the finale as “saying goodbye to the tv show supernatural” and not “wrapping up the story we’ve been telling,” because the only connection between kansas and the main characters of supernatural is a meta one (the use of “carry on wayward son” in the recaps before each season finale, and the girls in 10x05 singing it in their musical). in-universe, the band that’s most meaningful to the characters and that they bond over is led zeppelin, not kansas; dean and sam getting to heaven and finding the band kansas waiting to play a show for them would seem completely out of left field to them, because to them kansas is just a random band that wrote a song sam doesn’t even like. “everyone’s in heaven for a kansas concert at the roadhouse!” is the supernatural finale you come up with if you’re not thinking about the characters or the plot, but rather making a Grand Finale that requires minimal storytelling effort. like i would bet actual money the conversation/thought process behind the finale went something like this:

“supernatural is finally coming to an end, what should we do for the finale?”

“how about a huge reunion with all the beloved characters we’ve seen over the years? we could set it in heaven so we could bring back all the dead characters, maybe even set it in the roadhouse since we know fans loved it. maybe we could even book kansas to play carry on wayward son one last time.”

“perfect! but wait, how do sam and dean get to heaven?”

“idk, dean used to say he couldn’t live a normal life and sam used to want to quit hunting, so... dean gets killed on a hunt and sam dies of old age?”

“yeah, sure, fuck it. it’s all just groundwork to get to the big payoff of the heaven kansas concert anyway.”

whereas if they’d been thinking about where the characters were at story-wise by the end of season 15, it should have been more like:

“okay, so they’ve defeated chuck and finally gotten the free will they’ve spent years fighting for. what do they do with that?”

“well, sam was really messed up about losing eileen again, so his first order of business should be reuniting with her.”

“definitely. what about dean, though? he just watched cas die, and that always hits him hard.”

“you’re right, and he found out that cas loved him immediately beforehand. that’s gotta be fucking with his head.”

“okay, so we’ve gotta address the cas situation in some way. probably easiest just to bring him back to life, right?”

“yeah, we can figure out exactly how we want to play it later, but we can’t really wrap up dean’s storyline in 40 minutes if cas stays dead. hey, do you think they keep hunting now that chuck’s not forcing them to?”

and so on.

#game of thrones really is an apt comparison #because the last couple seasons of that show were plagued by moments that you could tell the writers just thought would be cool #(zombie ice dragon breaking down the wall/dany going mad queen/etc.) #and then wrote the plot around them even when they didn't make sense or contradicted earlier canon #or required way more character development than they had time to cover or set up a new story element that demanded payoff #or oh my god the HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER FINALE #fucking classic 'we didn't think about the plot or character development while coming up with this finale #(because we wrote it almost a decade ago and refused to scrap it even when the show clearly outgrew it) #so now the characters whose wedding we spent the entire final season on have to get divorced #so one of them can hook up with the other main character who we've spent years establishing is not a good match for her' #god this post is so long and so badly written but like. i'm right #the tradition of the grand finale is one of the worst things to happen to tv writing imo #your final episode should be first and foremost about bringing the characters' stories to a logical and satisfying close #if you can also fit in a big splashy celebration of the show that's great but it CANNOT supplant the actual storytelling part #the greatest hits