So I saw Rise of the Guardians on lookingatthepieces‘s recommendation, and on the whole, I liked it very, very much. And, wow, talk about a textbook case of Heroine’s Journey. Like Flutie catnip. :)
Let’s step through it stage by stage, shall we?
Needless to say, there are Super Duper Plot Spoilers behind the break:
Just do it! Pick a direction and go.
You don’t have to go deep-dive, or have memorized canon chapter and verse. Just pick an opinion you have about the show and step through it, showing exactly what led you to your conclusions. Or pick a character you like, or a storyline, and explain what it is you like. Why does it speak to you? Okay, good. Now tell everyone else.
I’m not trying to be facetious, tom, but there really isn’t any great secret about writing meta, or anything else, other than (as myjusticecake says), “butt in chair”. That’s it, I swear.
coffeeisoxygen Asks:
flutiebear Said:
Hee! Again, I’m glad you liked, and it warms my heart that you’re so enthusiastic for more :)
But please, be patient with me — it takes time to research a good analysis, since for this one I’ve got to rewatch the episodes in question, hunt down the scripts, take notes, etc. And then it takes even more time to organize my thoughts and write them up in a coherent manner.
Besides, weekends aren’t always the most productive, as I’ve got practices and errands and other commitments that cut into the writing time.
Anyway, I promise, Part 2 will be coming soon :)
Anonymous Asks:
flutiebear Said:
Aww, thank you grayface-bb. Your note really cheered me up. :)
The writers and producers are asked about from time to time, and I believe the company line is that when Cas made Dean whole again at the end of “Swan Song”, he removed all his scars, including the handprint. Which, okay, fine: You could make the argument that through Sam’s sacrifice, Dean is “born again” and given a second chance on life (with Lisa, Ben, etc), and that Cas removing the handprint is a way to physically underscore the metaphor.
But not only is that fairly inconsistent with Cas’s character (not to mention negate the symbolic callback to the Song of Solomon), the production team has also revealed that the scar’s absence was mostly just a goof — that the handprint should have appeared in S6 (in the flashback love scene with Lisa), but they just forgot it. And once they forgot it, they just sort of decided to roll with it.
Goddamn I hope that line makes it into the final draft of this Meta Thursday essay I’m currently writing on masculinity and the Uncharted series.
Because I just really like it a lot, okay?
(also, unsurprisingly, I have a lot of feels about Uncharted 3)
Today’s topic is ostensibly “Your Least Favorite Season”, but seeing as how I like to stay positive on this blog, I’m going to cheat a bit and talk about why each of the seasons are my favorite, in one way or another. (Though since I’ve already spilled enough words on Season 7, which is in fact my favorite season, I’ll skip it in today’s meta.)
In this first part, I’ll explore why I love Seasons 1-3. (Seasons 4-6 will have to wait until later today, after work next week, on Meta Monday, sorry):
Season 1: Favorite Monsters
Very early on, Supernatural established itself as a different kind of horror show by pulling from some fantastic deep-end-of-the-pool mythology. Forget vampires and werewolves: This show served up wendigos, shtrigas, even old world gods. And when an episode did demand a more traditional monster – such as a grim reaper or a shapeshifter – you could be sure that the Supernatural incarnation would offer a subversion on the usual associated tropes. (Grim reapers, for example, are usually depicted as faceless and emotionless, while Supernatural’s Reapers not only have faces but personalities—as we saw in “Faith”, they can even hold grudges.)
What I love so much about Season 1 is that these new monsters weren’t made up out of thin air; shrtrigas, wendigos, even the Vanir are all lesser known creatures from real-world legends around the globe. And while the show’s presentation isn’t always accurate, it is at least respectful, in that it attempts to include and highlight legends that go beyond the typical Western European playset. Plus, it was a brilliant move on the writers’ part: For a supernaturally-themed show debuting during the height of the mid-2000s Twilight-inspired freakout, what better way to set itself apart from the pack?
What’s interesting is how the monsters contrast to the rest of the show, which in Season 1 is still fairly by-the-book. Many episodes feature famous urban legends and classic horror stories—what child hasn’t heard the one about Bloody Mary or the Hook Man? – and the character archetypes (the old black soothsayer; the family of inbred killers; the faith healer who believes he is the genuine article) are all rather well-trod tropes in the horror genre. Even the idea of two brothers chasing after an absent father’s shadow is a classic literary theme, showing up in Brothers Karamazov and East of Eden, for starters. That’s to say nothing of the writing, which is generally cheesy and overwrought save for certain standout episodes like “Faith” (fuck yeah Sera Gamble).
So in the end, I think it was the monsters – not to mention the charisma and acting quality of the two main leads – that made viewers take notice, giving the show the lifeblood it needed to make it to later seasons. And thank god it did.
Big news time!
The editors at Gamasutra, one of the best remaining games journalism sites around, have invited me to start a member blog dedicated to all things gaming meta, and my first entry, on how Dragon Age 2 tracks The Heroine’s Journey (which should sound awfully familiar, no?), has already been made a Featured Post! Very exciting.
So even if you saw version 1.0 of that essay, I’d invite you to go check this new version out, as I made substantial edits to the essay and changed around a few conclusions.
To be honest, I’m a little nervous about the whole enterprise, even though for several years in a previous life I worked as a full-time games journalist. I mean, it’s one thing to publish game criticism under in the relative anonymity of my Tumblr handle, and within the safe space of a fandom. It’s another thing entirely to publish under my real name and for the greater gaming community at large. Wider audiences inherently invite more trolls, and as much as I do believe “haters gonna hate”, there is equal wisdom in knowing when and where to pick your battles. Thoughtful, feminist-minded game critique tends to incite rage in a certain unsavory element within the gaming community — and it’s one of the reasons I left the biz in the first place.
Still, despite my nerves I have full confidence in both the maturity of Gamasutra’s audience and the advocacy of the editorial staff that this enterprise has a strict no-trolls-allowed policy.
The plan is to update the blog once a week, probably on Mondays (meta Monday!). You’ll probably see a fair bit of crossover in content published both places, as I’ve been encouraged to mine my tumblr for gems and vice versa. But generally, I’m viewing this blog as a push to branch out a bit from my usual source of inspiration, Dragon Age, and delve deeper into some of my other favorite games, maybe Uncharted, Grim Fandango, Beyond Good and Evil, Psychonauts,some indie games like Bastion or Journey, etc. Hope you enjoy the ride!
vhanstiel Asks:
flutiebear Said:
Thanks so much! It’s been a blast to write, and I’m glad I finally have the chance to articulate why I love Season 7 (and why it frustrates me so much when fans accuse it of poor or shoddy writing).
If you’re liking this series, check out the other SPN-themed meta I’ve written. And my Supernatural-only blog, deans-obssession-with-angel-lips, might be up your alley too. Cheers!
This week, in honor of the Season 7 finale on Friday, I’ve decided to do a five-part meta about why I love flawed, beautiful, broken Season 7 so much.
Yesterday I explained how Season 7 was basically one long Descent/Eye of the Storm stage of the Heroine’s Journey for Dean Winchester, in which all of his weapons and resources were stripped away, one by one. Today: I look at the rest of the Heroine’s Journey stages and speculate on what they could mean for the season finale—and Season 8.
Previously: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
***
The Descent stage might be bad, but what comes next is lethal: Once the protagonist has been stripped of all her weapons, the next stage in The Heroine’s Journey is Death. As I wrote last week:
In the Death stage, everything goes to hell at once. The Heroine is caught off guard when the villain comes back, and this time, the Heroine doesn’t have any of her weapons left to fight. The villain, intent on the Heroine’s destruction, and the Heroine believes there’s nothing she can do to stop it. She is utterly vulnerable. Everything is lost. She dies: She failed at her journey and accepts defeat.
Despite his shiny new leather coat (which serves as a visual metaphor for death and rebirth), I don’t think we’ve really seen Dean hit rock bottom yet. An entire season of loss, alcoholism, and grief haven’t really caught up to him so far – he’s just sort of pretending it didn’t happen at this point—and in fact, with most of the Leviathan Sword completed, he and Sam seem in good shape to take on Dick Roman.
That of course will be rectified in the finale. Everything will go to hell at once. For whatever reason, the sword won’t work, and all of Dean’s weapons that were stripped from him in the Descent stage will be shown to be useless once more. You’ll see Cas refuse to fight. Bobby will go vengeful spirit. Sam will somehow be neutralized and taken out of the fight (if the writers really want to be mean about it, they’d combine those last two; it’s what I would do). The Impala will come back, only to be destroyed. Frank will re-emerge, but he’ll be working for the Leviathan, and so on. You get the drill. Shit will hit the fan, and a point will come where it looks like there’s no way for Dean to win.
Spoilery Season 7 Goodness – And A Whole Lotta Speculation — Behind The Break:
This is so epic, I have no words… (Except maybe that there is not much said about Sam and the sole focus is on Dean….but honestly, maybe that’s why it seems like the destiel fandom seems to be ignoring Sam - see, he has no “interesting” issues like that..he is healthy, clean of demon blood and not emotionally constipated.. simply no angst here - he is a perfect, normal, kind, handsome and smart flawless human being, that could just simply go and become anything he wants and or do anything he wants. …Dean on the other hand has always new issues to deal with and therefore is in a little disturbing way “more interesting”) Once he will overcome his issues, who knows what will happen. Except that the show might become a little boring and once again be about a monster of the week:)) Perhaps we could get a happy ending after all..
It’s a fair criticism, but the reason I didn’t really touch on Sam is that he already took his Heroine’s Journey last season. As I mention in Part Two, I think Sam and Cas undergo Journeys in Season 6 that are mirror images of each other — one man starts with no soul and reclaims his, while the other starts with a soul and loses his — and for the most part, the hard emotional stuff for Sam is over. Which is good. Our boy has earned a rest.
The focus this season has been on Dean, who has spent so much time throughout the series avoiding his own emotional growth that he still has much further left to go compared to his brother. But I adore Mr. Moosey McSideburns just as much as the other members of Team Free Will, and the focus on Dean and Destiel in my analysis here isn’t meant to be any sort of swipe at Sam.
Will we get a happy ending? Bah. This is Supernatural after all, whose motto is “whatever doesn’t kill you tears our your heart and leaves you to bleed to death on the living room floor”.
This week, in honor of the Season 7 finale on Friday, I’ve decided to do a five-part meta about why I love flawed, beautiful, broken Season 7 so much.
Yesterday I explained how Season 7 was basically one long Descent/Eye of the Storm stage of the Heroine’s Journey for Dean Winchester, in which all of his weapons and resources were stripped away, one by one. Today: I look at the rest of the Heroine’s Journey stages and speculate on what they could mean for the season finale—and Season 8.
Previously: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
***
The Descent stage might be bad, but what comes next is lethal: Once the protagonist has been stripped of all her weapons, the next stage in The Heroine’s Journey is Death. As I wrote last week:
In the Death stage, everything goes to hell at once. The Heroine is caught off guard when the villain comes back, and this time, the Heroine doesn’t have any of her weapons left to fight. The villain, intent on the Heroine’s destruction, and the Heroine believes there’s nothing she can do to stop it. She is utterly vulnerable. Everything is lost. She dies: She failed at her journey and accepts defeat.
Despite his shiny new leather coat (which serves as a visual metaphor for death and rebirth), I don’t think we’ve really seen Dean hit rock bottom yet. An entire season of loss, alcoholism, and grief haven’t really caught up to him so far – he’s just sort of pretending it didn’t happen at this point—and in fact, with most of the Leviathan Sword completed, he and Sam seem in good shape to take on Dick Roman.
That of course will be rectified in the finale. Everything will go to hell at once. For whatever reason, the sword won’t work, and all of Dean’s weapons that were stripped from him in the Descent stage will be shown to be useless once more. You’ll see Cas refuse to fight. Bobby will go vengeful spirit. Sam will somehow be neutralized and taken out of the fight (if the writers really want to be mean about it, they’d combine those last two; it’s what I would do). The Impala will come back, only to be destroyed. Frank will re-emerge, but he’ll be working for the Leviathan, and so on. You get the drill. Shit will hit the fan, and a point will come where it looks like there’s no way for Dean to win.
Spoilery Season 7 Goodness – And A Whole Lotta Speculation — Behind The Break:
fragilespark Asks:
flutiebear Said:
Good questions both! (and thank you again SO MUCH for sending in your language question — augh, we had such a fun time answering it on air!)
As far as Tevinter being based on Latin, I think it was likely a creative choice, as Latin offers certain commonly understood cultural shorthands. When I hear Latin, I think of vast archaic empires, I think of political backbiting and scheming, and above all, I think of the Fall of Rome — that is, an outdated system in decline and ready to topple. And I get all that just from a couple of elves and slavers that sound vaguely like an HBO miniseries. Pretty smart choice on their part.
As for your second question, there was a meme going around a few months ago where people would write drabbles associated with words that didn’t translate into English. myjusticecake came up with some devastatingly brilliant ones — in particular, check out Ya’aburnee and Saudade. I know it’s not quite what you asked, but these really shouldn’t be missed.
For what it’s worth, I wish more fanfic writers would explore the Dragon Age languages — maybe you should write something for us! :)
Lord above, someone stop me. These just keep getting longer and longer. I think I have a problem.
This week, in honor of the Season 7 finale on Friday, I’ve decided to do a five-part meta about why I love flawed, beautiful, broken Season 7 so much.
Previously: Part One and Part Two
***
The next two stages of the Heroine’s Journey are The Descent and Eye of the Storm. As I wrote last week, in the Descent stage:
Now that the Heroine has made her life-changing decision, she must face the music and realize things actually must change. This is a stage about facing her fears and obstacles, like gates that must be opened. At first, the Heroine will try to use the weapons and tools she brought along to confront them, but they won’t work. Thus they are stripped away from her. The only way she gets past these obstacles is by finding the inner strength within to confront them.
Meanwhile, in the Eye of the Storm phase:
After facing her fears – maybe even the Big Baddie itself– the Heroine has a moment to catch her breath and come to grips with what has just occurred. She realizes that hey, actually, when push came to shove, she didn’t do half-bad. She starts to understand that she’s stronger than she thinks, better, smarter, more competent. She thinks maybe the hard part is finally over.
These two stages may be repeated over and over as needed, and basically, I think that Dean has spent most of Season 7 pingponging between the two, caught in a state of freefall as he’s stripped of the few remaining weapons and resources he has left.
Spoilery Season 7 Goodness – And A Whole Lotta Meta — Behind The Break:
This week, in honor of the Season 7 finale on Friday, I’ve decided to do a five-part meta about why I love flawed, beautiful, broken Season 7 so much. Yesterday I introduced the idea of the descent story and the Heroine’s Journey, which I think is being used as a storytelling blueprint for Supernatural seasons 6 and 7. Today I’m going to elaborate a little further on exactly how, using Dean’s story arc as an example.
ETA: I know this meta series is supposed to be a defense of Season 7, but today I spend a fair bit of time on Season 6 — a necessary side-trip to make the rest of the week make sense. Sorry for the bait and switch, but hopefully you’ll bear with me for a bit longer.
Previously: Part One
***
The finale of Season 5, “Swan Song”, left the writers of Supernatural in a bit of a bind. With the apocalypse averted and all external foes either vanquished or sealed away, what was left as a source of conflict for our characters? Who or what could Team Free Will struggle against? Moreover, what could possibly present a challenge worthy of our protagonists, who could now smite demons and archangels as easily as wendigos or vengeful spirits?
Even in the most open-ended of fictional universes, this wouldn’t be an easy question to answer, and personally I think the writers opted for the best solution available: That is, when all external conflicts have been neutralized, any new conflicts must come from within. And as uncomfortable as it is to see Sam, Dean and Cas turn on each other and become their own worst enemies, it was really the only choice that would’ve made any sense whatsoever, because Team Free Will was simply too powerful to be believably threatened by any outside force.
So how do you tell this story?
Enter the Heroine’s Journey, an archetypical storytelling pattern well-suited for characters who need to battle inner demons instead of outer ones. The writers took this blueprint and applied it to Team Free Will, each in their own ways. Not all initiate their Journeys at the same point nor end at the same time, but each of the three main characters – Sam, Dean and Cas – have embarked on a descent story, to come back down the mountain, so to speak, towards a place of rest and inner peace.
Last week’s Meta Thursday was supposed to be a SPN 30 Day Challenge Essay on “Your Favorite Season”, but then it grew into something completely different, as I’m sure you noticed. (Just in case, here’s what you missed: Taking the Heroine’s Journey: How This Often Overlooked Storytelling Pattern Works, Using Tangled and DA2 As Examples, Part One and Part Two.)
So this week, in honor of the Season 7 finale this Friday, I’ve decided to do a five-part meta all this week about why I love flawed, beautiful, broken Season 7 so much. Today is more of an intro than anything else, but stay tuned for tomorrow, when I start digging into the Heroine’s Journey in more detail.
***
Most of us have a love-hate relationship with happily ever after. As much as we crave more story, more of our favorite characters and universes, we tend to find sequels, epilogues, and even just post-ending fanfic weird and unsettling.
For good reason, too, for no two words are more satisfying than “The End”.
As much as it hurts to hear sometimes, “The End” is also a blessing, because it lets you know that the characters’ struggles (and your role as empathizer) have reached their natural conclusion. “The End” means these characters, this world that you’ve fallen in love with will be alright without you. It’s okay to for you and them both move on. In that way, endings are gifts, blessings, benedictions.
But they’re also illusions. Because the story never ends, not really. For every action, there is a reaction, for every cause a consequence, and that’s what a life is: a sequence of stories tied into each other, messy and indistinct, no beginning or end, just one long jumble, nasty, brutish and short.
I like to think that stories that continue to follow these threads long after they’ve been tied into a neat little bow are subversive—even defiant. They show the neat little bow for the illusion it is. In a way, epilogues, sequels, lost chapters and all the rest are our reminder to ourselves that a story is not absolute truth handed down from the high heavens, but a contract between author and listener, a man-made construct subject to our will and desires, and stories only end when we want them to, not when some Divine Plan says they should.
Maybe for this reason alone it’s fitting that Supernatural has continued long after Kripke’s original five-season plan. For a narrative whose main theme was about ripping up the script and writing our own fates, I suspect the original “unhappily ever after” conclusion to “Swan Song” would’ve been too neat to truly satisfy.
That Supernatural has dared to continue has been, in and of itself, dissatisfying to many viewers. But I find it more honest —because as Chuck says, the story never really ends, does it?
More Supernatural Season 6 and 7 meta after the break:
Anonymous Asks:
flutiebear Said:
Thanks, kind anon! Glad you liked. :) (And for those who missed my Super Huge Meta Dump this morning, check out “Taking the Heroine’s Journey: How This Often Overlooked Storytelling Pattern Works, Using Tangled and Dragon Age 2 as Examples”, Part One and Part Two. Beware though: They’re long.)
I would be happy to one day write more in-depth articles on traditionally Eastern storytelling tropes (the Journey to the West comes right to mind, doesn’t it?). But an essay like that will take more research, I think, because I’m not as familiar with stories that follow those patterns as I am with the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journey. I grew up with the Hero and Heroine’s Journey. Journey to the West, on the other hand, is something I didn’t encounter until college.
But in case you’ve discounted the Heroine’s Journey as yet another artifact of Western culture, consider that the “classic” and best-known example of this storytelling pattern actually hails from the (Ancient) Middle East. In the ancient Akkadian/Sumerian myth of Inanna/Ishtar’s Descent (which I didn’t mention in my meta today because I was already running super long), the goddess Inanna visits the underworld to make amends to her sister, Erishkigal, the Queen of the Dead. In doing so is stripped of all her power, dies a physical death, and is reborn. Wikipedia has an okay summary of the major plot points, I guess, if a little disjointed; and of course the details differ from translation to translation. The book i referenced in my meta, 45 Master Characters, has a better point-by-point summary.
Interesting side note: Inanna’s Descent is obliquely referenced in Gilgamesh — according to one translation, the bull that Enkidu and Gilgamesh kill in order to piss off Inanna is actually Erishkigal’s husband. When Inanna goes to visit Erishkigal in the Underworld, it’s to apologize for her role in causing her husband’s death.
