Mary asked me today, as I am apparently the sage of SPN, "are there any cliches in fandom that haven't been done?" and there was but one I could think of; all the rest had pretty quality examples. So lets see if we can fill in the gap(s). I'm not trying to list *all* the examples there are, just the ones I found particularly memorable (keeping in mind that a whole lot will be slashy/incesty, so look for warnings and ratings on the stories, yo):

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eta: cocombat has compiled an extensive list of 'crack', many of which fit under these categories!! go forth!


My theory is that there's no weddingfic because of the whole "brothers! closer than liek, the olsen twins!" as an excuse to, you know, not make the union legal. also, incest. (disregarding the distinct lack of legislation allowing same-sex couples to marry in a lot of the countries people write fic for, but yaknow, fic.) And I know what you're thinking, but having their union blessed by a pagan god does NOT count; for it to be a cliche fic it totally has to have rings and ceremonies and suits and daddy walking them down the aisle and CRYING, DAMMIT, I WANT WINCHESTEARS and "like a virgin!" weddingnight uber-slash (with crying and passing out and) and, um, *cough* sorry, got a bit carried away there.

There's another amnesia fic that I can't for the life of me dig up, so if you can remember who wrote it/what it was called, PLEASE drop me a comment, Mary and I are tearing our hair out at the whole lethologica of it. It's that one where the 'lrignaf demon' (read: 'fangirl' in reverse) causes them both to lose their memories, and they're like "dude, we must be freaks, look at these guns!" and then "dude, you're hot, lets have sex!" and hijinks, naturally, ensue. eta: got it! thanks, deidre_c!

So if you can think of any fanfic cliches I've missed, or any stories you think desperately need to be in there, drop me a comment. I freaking love this stuff.



Also randomly today, because you totally wish you could be present for all conversations between Mary and I, in fact you wish we released a podcast, and this might just be the longest run-on-sentence ever, with far too many, commas, that are also unecessary but anyway: conversation heard in this very room this very day as mary and I were watching 'Wendigo':

me: there should be a totem animal cliche fic, Dean would totally have that alpha dog thing going on.
mary: *giving me a look that says "oh god, is this leading where I think this is leading?"* oh yeah?
me: yeah. he'd just pee all over Sam's stuff.
mary: *facepalm of "oh god, you totally did, you're obsessed with Dean peeing on everything of Sam's"* hahah, you should totally write it.
me: ...only fandom would never forgive me for Dean peeing on Jess's headstone.
mary: ...

This, of course, followed on from the very apt comment that in the first half of Wendigo, Dean is totally following Callum Keith Rennie around the forest and peeing on everything CKR pees on.


THE END. Aren't you glad I shared? yes, the calibre of our conversation is always this high.

PS. Dean is totally an alpha dog who didn't see Sam for two years at college because the last time he showed up he peed on all of Sam's friends.

eta: and dude, try and tell me that John's comment about Dean's car and hell, all of John's behaviour in 'Dead Man's Blood' isn't John essentially going around peeing on everything.

eta2: and like, don't try and convince me that Sam would go around peeing on anything, because he already has Dean so pussy-whipped.

eta3: I can't believe I just made like, half of this entire post about Winchester pee.

eta4: Speaking of...

I tried to go to bed; it didn’t work.

( more spoilers, some speculation, a poll. )

( eta: hah. that’s why don’t like Meg. (meta) )

( more SPN costuming meta, with pictures - spoilers for 1.16: Shadow and 1.18: Something Wicked )

And while I'm talking about John and Dean, ( ... 1.20: Dead Man's Blood spoilers )

( eta! )


I am on fire with the meta today. Next on the spn:meta agenda: fandom meta on genderfuckery.

As I have discussed before, I have Supernatural theories on the Sam-Max-Meg dynamic. Or rather, arc.

In part of the whole big conspiracy-theory arc, it's pretty damn obvious that Sam and Meg and Max are connected somehow. Regardless of their biological origins, I reckon in some aspect they're cuckoo babies - they're not just thematically similar, they're all part of the same 'generation' in the grand scheme of things.

That said, one of the things I love lots about the show is its ham-fistedness. It's not subtle at all in its 'subtext'/foreshadowing/semiotics.

( visual evidence )

The other parallells with Max are pretty obvious... like, their names ('Max' is 'Sam' reversed); and with Meg, too - Meg Masters for frick's sake. (Gee, I wonder who Meg's daddy could be?)


I keep getting excited about where the show is going, but also a bit terrified at how easily I can see it jumping the shark. I mean... I dunno. I may seem like a Sam fangirl, but honestly I am just as much a Dean fangirl. But my love for them is completely different. (And I freaking love that this show can cover all bases for me.) I love that Sam's everything I heart in a fictional character. All his wacky character-development and -arc, the way he's constructed, back story, all that... as a fictional character, I'm totally in love with Sam. He hits my buttons. On the other side, Dean gets me going in an entirely different way - Dean's meta-position in the text gives me a big fat intellectual hard-on. He solidifies (and at the same time, fluid-ifies) the entire discursive structure of the text. I just... nnng. Dean. Do me, and my brain plz kthx.

So anyway, shark-jumping. If Dean's position in the text is degraded and he gets sucked into the sub-level of the fictional text, its authority will be severely compromised and the shark, it will be jumped.

So. *crosses fingers*

PS. I am tagging all my Supernatural meta posts with spn:meta. FYI.

While i've got my big fat mouth open, why don't I talk meta about another fanon characterisation I don't particularly agree with?

( cut for possible spoilers? i'm discussing in particular 1.06:Skin and 1.10:Asylum )

Sam doesn't strive or long for normalcy - he's after a balance between both parts of his life where he gets to have everyone he loves. Think about it - the only time in the entire canon we see him actually happy is in the pilot, that tiny slice of time between when Dean pulls up outside his apartment and he opens his eyes to see Jess pinned to the ceiling.

Think of when we see Sam before Dean turns up in his apartment the first time - he's not entirely happy, is he? He's somewhat melancholy, somewhat conflicted. He won't accept the complete normalcy of that 'normal' life, won't partake in the whole Halloween thing. When Dean turns up, Sam's reluctant to go with him - he stresses to Dean that he's not about to abandon his 'normal' life and give in entirely to the hunt again.

So, think of that little slice of time... Dean drops him off, Sam is happy - happy both because he's come back home at the end of the hunt, and happy because he had a good time with Dean, on the hunt. He agrees, yes, they made a good team. He doesn't say "I can't believe you made me do that, never come back"; he says "call me if you need me". AKA, that was fun, let's do it again. And I can come back home at the end of it.

He has Jess, he has a home, and he has Dean and the thrill of the hunt. I went over that footage closely when I was vidding and dude, as early in the piece (and thus not perfectly-established characterisation yet) as it was, at that moment, Sam was content. This is what he wanted all along - it was John who told him "if you go, stay gone" - I don't think Sam ever wanted that.

So when Jess goes up in flames, it's not the fact that the evil has taken away his normal life and left him with this awful life of hunting, it's that it's taken away his balance, ruined that perfection that he'd only just achieved. That's what he's fighting for - the right to not choose between one or the other, but to have both (to do away with the heirarchy/binary of normal/other or allowed/taboo). Which is actually possible. Which happened, in the pilot - the only thing that stopped it was whatever killed Jess.

So like, that conversation in Shadow that everyone is so het up about... I can't hate Sam for that, because I don't think Dean's perspective on that (which is what we are essentially getting), which has to choose one or the other, is necessarily accurate... Sam says he wants his 'normal' life back once they've killed the demon, but he never says anything about Dean not being a part of that (but because Dean has to choose, for him Sam + no hunting = no Dean). Which is why drvsilla's Maybe gives me a heart-clutch for that option that somehow we didn't automatically consider; that we could have both Sam's need for home and domesticity and Dean's living-for-the-hunt - and thus their need for each other still fulfilled.


But then, there are instances here and there where the text suggests that Sam isn't allowed to have both that he does have to choose - and I think sometimes this 'there-will-be-consequences' element to it slots in with the queer reading; I'm thinking now of the woman in white from the pilot and her "you will be [unfaithful]" - because by partaking in both lives, loving and being with both Jess and Dean, he is being unfaithful - he has to be faithful to one life or the other, and the narrative will ultimately make sure of that somehow (the foreshadowing of which makes me somewhat sick and anxious).

ANYONE ON MY FLIST INVOLVED IN ANY FANDOM WHATSOEVER PLIS READ INSTEAD OF SCROLLING

So here's a thought: a fandom wikipedia. Multifandom, a one-stop-shop for terminology, pairing names, significant communities and events, anything you wanted, really. Because you would be the editors/creators. I'm enthused by this idea, and am willing to purchase a domain name and space specifically for it, as well as install the wiki software. Two questions:

1. Do you know if there's an existing fandom wiki or something like it out there?

2. Would you use it? (And by that I mean not only use it as a reference, but submit information to it.)



Second thing: IF YOU ARE OR EVER HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN THE RPS RPG 'THE ESTABLISHMENT' ( CLICK HERE )

Alright, Sam's arc in Supernatural as a subverted Oedipal (Freudian rather than mythical) narrative:

First, here's the Oedipal complex's basic structure: boy desires mother, has murderous/jealous thoughts toward father-as-competition. Boy sees mother's lack of penis, deduces from this a castration carried out by the father. Fear/threat of castration overwhelms the desire for the mother; boy submits to the law of the father, giving up the mother with the promise that he'll grow to fill his father's shoes, so to speak, and find a replacement mother (ie. female mate) in future.

So, how does that fit with Sam? [I should note here that I'm looking at this in terms of a metaphoric text with a character representing ideas; I'm not trying to psychoanalyse 'Sam-the-person'.]

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I was thinking earlier about my odd relationship with the Supernatural fandom - I'm totally into it, I love the picspams, the fics, the speculation, the meta, the fanonisation... but on a grass-roots level, I'm not part of the dialogue. I don't seem to have any SPN fans on my flist. Well, I mean, I do - but they're friends I already know. I have not gained any new friends on my flist since becoming part of the SPN fandom. So I'm not an active part of creating the dialogue on a personal (as in, discussion in which temporality plays some part; not out-of-time public texts like fic or art) level.

So why is this? Because usually this is how you (I) get involved in fandom, how dialogue spaces are opened up and/or muscled in on - you find people who are interesting, who are talking about things to do with that text/fandom that interest you, whose journals you keep going back to. Until eventually you get sick of going to their journal and just friend them already - thus integrating yourself (and them) into that fandom's particular network/system. It's a pattern that I've repeated through LOTR, lotrips, 21JS, Firefly... It's the key feature of Livejournal that really changed the space, face and substance of fandom - no longer were there 'off topic' posts; you were posting in your journal, everything was on-topic, be it fandom or otherwise. So I friend you because i like your lotrips fic, but I end up privy to your went-to-work-today or played-with-the-kids-today or had-sex-with-the-hubby today posts too; thus I get to know you, you get to know me, the public (fandom)/private ('RL/personality') boundaries are blurred.

But, fandom newsletters are subverting that dynamic interplay. I don't even have to friend the communities now, let alone worry about whether everyone who's writing/creating something is posting it to that community - the newsletter (be it four_lobsters, the_cortex or spnnewsletter) is gathering all those 'public space' texts (meta, recs, fics, art, picspam, news, speculation, etc etc) and posting them all in the one place... I don't have to worry about friending someone whose stories I like. I can just wait for the newsletter to tell me when and where they post the next one. Thus terminating the possibility of being forced to 'get to know them', and thus engage with them, and subsequently participate in that fertile interplay of instantaneous thought and discussion.

So, on the one hand I love fandom newsletters because boyhowdy, they sure are handy, but on the other... I've never felt so disconnected from a fandom before. I really gotta get out there and start friending. If only because I love to have my fingers in a whole bunch o' pies.

writing female characters always makes me anxious. ah, i miss the days when writing fanfic was just pure visceral joy instead of having too-many-thoughts. yaknow? ah well.

that said, here's a fic i just puked out after re-watching season 2's 'christmas in saigon' with clizzle and squeeing our weasely black guts out. 21 jump street, of course, if you had any confusion in your mind.

i heart this show so. i'm not particularly fond of the way this fic turned out but i'm trying to la la la turn off my thoughts so i can just write and enjoy it without cutting myself off before i even begin.

anyhoo.