The thing that really struck me on my first watch of Supernatural, was the female supporting characters. I'm used to shows that treat their one-off supporting characters as disposable cliches at worst, as one dimensional at best.
This show though, it's really male. It's a story about brothers, masculinity and family. There's seemingly not a lot of space in it for women, yet within Season 1's supporting cast it's generally the men that get sacrificed for the plot and the women who survive.
If you've read my earlier posts you'll have deduced that season 1 follows a monster of the week format.
In Wendigo a woman is searching for her brother, lost in the woods. Dead in the Water features mysterious drownings, we are led through the town by the Sheriff's daughter. In Bloody Mary we meet a woman who is being stalked by Bloody Mary. Hook Man gives us a preacher's daughter with sexual hangups. Asylum has a male/female couple in a haunted hospital. Scarecrow gives us a young woman in a town full of Vanir worshippers. I can't be arsed to list the rest but you get the gist.
The thing these women have in common is that they all learn about the monsters under the bed, and while it scares them, obviously it scares them, they cope with it. They accept it, they don't freak out, they figure out how they can help the brothers and carry on with life. I expected them to be flat, and screamy, and not much use to be quite honest. Instead, on the whole they are courageous and resilient.
This treatment changed in season 2, (bearing in mind on my rewatch I'm only on episode 8) where the supporting characters were usually male. That makes me sad. On the other hand we get to meet Ellen and Jo who are AH-mazing. The Usual Suspects gives us a female cop who is just as capable as the season 1 supporting women.
I really want to read a fic where all these supporting women are in a bar, a few years after they first met the brothers. They are mostly living a normal life, maybe they've killed a few things themselves, and they are chatting and catching up with the other women about the brothers and the cases where they met. Some will get outrageously drunk, some will be snarky. They'd gossip about the brothers and compare notes. It would be such fun and we would get some brilliant outsider point of view stories.
I want this.
This show though, it's really male. It's a story about brothers, masculinity and family. There's seemingly not a lot of space in it for women, yet within Season 1's supporting cast it's generally the men that get sacrificed for the plot and the women who survive.
If you've read my earlier posts you'll have deduced that season 1 follows a monster of the week format.
In Wendigo a woman is searching for her brother, lost in the woods. Dead in the Water features mysterious drownings, we are led through the town by the Sheriff's daughter. In Bloody Mary we meet a woman who is being stalked by Bloody Mary. Hook Man gives us a preacher's daughter with sexual hangups. Asylum has a male/female couple in a haunted hospital. Scarecrow gives us a young woman in a town full of Vanir worshippers. I can't be arsed to list the rest but you get the gist.
The thing these women have in common is that they all learn about the monsters under the bed, and while it scares them, obviously it scares them, they cope with it. They accept it, they don't freak out, they figure out how they can help the brothers and carry on with life. I expected them to be flat, and screamy, and not much use to be quite honest. Instead, on the whole they are courageous and resilient.
This treatment changed in season 2, (bearing in mind on my rewatch I'm only on episode 8) where the supporting characters were usually male. That makes me sad. On the other hand we get to meet Ellen and Jo who are AH-mazing. The Usual Suspects gives us a female cop who is just as capable as the season 1 supporting women.
I really want to read a fic where all these supporting women are in a bar, a few years after they first met the brothers. They are mostly living a normal life, maybe they've killed a few things themselves, and they are chatting and catching up with the other women about the brothers and the cases where they met. Some will get outrageously drunk, some will be snarky. They'd gossip about the brothers and compare notes. It would be such fun and we would get some brilliant outsider point of view stories.
I want this.
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