Was that a truly epically dense conglomeration of cultural-appropriation FAIL or what?
I can just see how that might have gone down at the scriptwriter's meeting: "It'll be edgy! It's kind of like
American Gods--only really stupid!"
ETA: Comments are spoileriffic now.
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I just.
Just.
GAH. WHAT? WHAT?
(I did love Kali, though, in spite of all the fail, probably because the actress is AWESOME.)
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It really couldn't have gone very well even from the basic premise. Ugh.
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0_o
I cringed and cringed..and cringed...
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By and large I get the feeling the writing is just blind ignorant rather than malicious, but yes, it would be nice to smack the writers upside the head with a few pointers on tact and basic respect first.
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Yes, I got the American Gods feeling, too. Not sure what to think about it all.
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But what's this I hear about Kali and Ganesh making an appearance?
(I am a practising Hindu)
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Feh.
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Oh dear Someone. That was painful for all kinds of reasons.
I was actually mostly fine with the Kali mentions up until Gabriel said "chick was all hands". -_-
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And I've always had a huge respect for all gods, so really... stepping on Odin's head? D:
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Kali tries to kill Lucifer and fails, which totally rubbed me the wrong way. She should have had no problem with that!
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The gods. Eat people. O_O
No indeed, She should not have had any problem. Even in a Judeo-Christian verse. And Odin! D:
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The basic concept? Pretty totally ripped off from 'American Gods', to start with. Which, OK, it's a big concept, plenty of ways to tell it, fine...but they didn't do any of the in-depth research Gaiman did and they didn't show any of his intelligence and respect. You cannot just pull gods at random from religions THAT BILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE PRACTICING and insult them like that. The people-eating business was just to make them gratuitous bad guys. There wasn't even any acknowledgment that Mercury would have different motives than Odin who would have different motives than Baron Samedi, etcetera. (Baron Samedi, from the Voudoun pantheon, at least is a sort-of-god of death. But he's a guardian and guide of the dead - he doesn't KILL people. Well, unless one really has it coming.)
And you certainly cannot get away with implying that your Christian-pantheon villain, who's not even a god, just a fallen archangel, is more powerful than all of them put together. If your plot demands that, then it's a STUPID, OFFENSIVE PLOT and you should rewrite it!
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Ouch. They really didn't even TRY this time, did they? ><
I agree!
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Not so much on dramatic-tension grounds. All the scenes focusing on Gabriel were pretty riveting, IMO, and although I don't think his death was necessary, it certainly was dramatically effective.
I just...I mean, this show has ALWAYS had problems with treating people who weren't white males as subjects* instead of objects.
* And by subjects, I mean actual PEOPLE who live inside their own heads and see through their own eyes and think of themselves as "I" and are the main characters of their own stories, rather than background occasions for fight scenes or man-pain. By making fucking KALI a "damsel in distress" who needs to be rescued by the white male human heroes at the end....wow. It's hard to find a more oblivious white-American-male-privilege characterization than that anywhere. At least the portrayals in other books and movies that painted her as a dangerous, evil demon didn't diminish her into just another "girl," y'know?
Don't even get me started on Baron Samedi and Ganesh and the SPN PTB's all-too-apparent enjoyment of killing black guys (never mind that there was no reason for Ganesh to be black - hello, ethnic casting? Wha?)
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I think they could have found another episode to effectively execute Gabriel at Lucifer's hands. Any other episode, ANY OTHER. It totally did not rely on anything else that happened in this ep.
I am seriously rethinking my desire to watch the show from the beginning now. Give me a reason to consider going through the trouble.
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I caught up late and own all the first four seasons on DVD now and can tell you this: The frustrating thing about SPN is that it has ALWAYS been a show full of great characters and great premises, desperately in search of plots that are worthy of them--and only about half the time finding them.
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I'll scare up some good recs lists for you. I gotta warn you, though, the fandom is really, really incesty and I know you don't care for that. The most popular pairing are the two main characters, who are brothers. (Consenting-adult sibling incest doesn't really bother me - I blame V.C. Andrews - but I know mileage varies a LOT.)
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I do think it's awfully sad to search out fanon simply because of the tragically bad writing of canon. :(
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And also: Episode 5.18, the one right before this latest trainwreck? SO GOOD!
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I wonder... do people without siblings have a better tolerance for incest fics more than those with siblings? You don't have any, I do - it certainly colours MY feelings on the subject.
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I don't know what "RPS" stands for. I feel ignorant. :(
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