juliesiege

[juliesiege]

Congrats! You win a prize for being the first person to interact with this blog that I honestly did completely forget about. (neutral, not-sarcastic statement. just surprised that...anyone found anything i posted honestly lol)

Feel free to disregard anything I write here. Ultimately, I don't really care about all this. I don't want to argue anything, and I understand, fundamentally, that, from a brief glance at your bio, we're going to view SPN through different and irreconcilably conflicting lenses, and therefore reaching consensus is not something that is likely to be done over a very silly tumblr post. I have no interest in changing your mind, and you cannot change mine.

With that out of the way, the point of my post, if I understand my own writing correctly, because I wrote all of this a VERY long time ago in my life-events chronology, was not a watsonian analysis. It was strictly a doylist one. Little disclaimer, but I usually analyze media through a doylist lens. Watsonian analysis I usually save for transformative reconfiguration. So my post is: Fandom finds this thing objectionable (It is in itself a scene that I don't actually really care about) -> this thing sticks in my craw and is a weird bump in my mental concept for Siege's SPN writing -> I ramble to myself to reconcile it on my SPN writer sideblog with 0 followers that none of my SPN friends even care about.

This is a post about the Kripke era writer room. This is not a post about SPN's relationship with portraying women, entitlement, sexual assault/coercion, OR how popular conceptions of consent have changed from when the episodes you've mentioned and other episodes containing similar questionable content were written and now.

Now this last one is a little tricky to discuss, so let me be explicitly clear, I'm not dismissing nor do I take lightly any kind of sexual assault. Any forms sexual assault are bad, horrible even, regardless of time period, but that doesn't mean that we as a society haven't seen shifts and growth both in conversation and American legislation surrounding this topic, and that because a work of fiction is produced earlier in the timeline, certain things might have been seen as more acceptable while they might stir up more (justified) outrage now.

Now, I'm not going to analyze sexual consent and Dean and Sam through a serious watsonian lens now. It's been too long since I've watched Supernatural, and while I haven't moved on from the fandom, I haven't had a serious watsonsian-framed discussion in like, at least 4 months, so I'm not equipped and it's not a discussion I really find enjoyment in having, especially with someone I know won't see eye-to-eye, and I'm here to have fun.

So have a doylist one instead!

What I will say is that I think A) the early writer's room didn't think too deeply about these things, and were, on some level, a product of their time, B) the original concept for Dean was just a really sleazy dude who was supposed to play second-fiddle to Sam, Kripke's self-insert, and you're not going to write and film your pilot episode with that framing in mind without having that contaminate a lot of episodes surrounding that, and C) yeah I really wish SPN didn't have these things in them. Of the two of them, Dean and Sam, Dean is shown to be more sexually active with strangers, which means that Dean is going to be the one who's going to take on the characterization of how the writers think man who's hooks up with a lot of women acts.

A thing that I like to note for my own sake is that these behaviors diminish over SPN's runtime. And when they do come up again, it can usually be attributed to certain writers. To discuss some of your examples. Slice Girls, which I think is the latest aired off the top of my head, was written by Eugenie Ross-Leming and Brad Buckner. They are, in my opinion, some of the worst writers to ever grace SPN's writer's room. They consistently have issues portraying race, sexual consent, both at the same time, and more! After School Special is written by David Loughlin and Andrew Dabb, and they BOTH have issues portraying race and sexual consent and both at the same time (and more!). Now David Loughlin eventually left SPN but Dabb stayed and went on to showrun SPN S12-15, which have some of the most abhorrent Dean characterization (and it wasn't just Dean but Dabb seemed to have a certain affinity for really drinking the "Dean is a shallow sleaze that thinks only for himself" kool-aid. There's a post out there that said that Dabb thinks Dean is his high school bully that like it could have some roots in truth.) I've ever seen and the episodes and arcs aren't even all that interesting or fun to boot. Now, Are You There God... is written by Sera Gamble, and discussing her characterization of Dean and her tendencies as a writer are MUCH more complex, so I shall simply leave this here and say that she's often pretty edgy because this post is already long enough.

Now you could probably go and snag examples from all over the Kripke era of Dean performing these behaviors, if you really wanted to, though please don't put in the work lol. But. I've already talked about my thoughts on the portrayals of such things in early season Supernatural in all this...somewhere.

Anyway, I hope you didn't actually read all of this. My long-winded, inconcise rambling is part of the reason that this is the first time this blog has seen the light of another person's day, and ultimately what I've written here is just a continuation of those bad habits. I'm going to go turn off reblogs on this now, like I probably would've done if the feature was available to begin with, because I'd really rather this didn't spread beyond this. If you feel particularly inclined to reply, the replies should still be open, but I think I've said all I can particularly think to say.

now's the time i guess. I'll probably RB this with more thoughts later but rn I'm trying to fall asleep and i think this will fix me. basically.

In 4.07 It's the Great Pumpkin Sam Winchester, Dean acts in some way that could be interpreted as interest toward a high schooler (at oldest 18, while Dean is probably 29 which. Oof) (it's been a while since I watched the exact scene but I remember thinking that it could potentially be interpreted otherwise, though that might be my Dean apologist/understander brain speaking. He's performing half-hearted interest. Maybe. Idk. I don't make the decisions, I just come up with the possible answers. Take this entire parenthetical with a grain of salt lol). Anyway here's the superwiki transcript.

(Now without watching it, my parenthetical still stands. From this I can't discern shit about Dean's intentions. Dean licks his lips constantly. He licks his lips before having a thought. Sam also has a history of taking a lot of what Dean does in the context of women in bad faith. Note also that Sam himself is the first person to vocalize it and the framing of a potentially underage girl as jailbait is in itself a potential yikes. But that's not what I'm here to discuss.)

I'm here to discuss. Is Julie Siege responsible for this. Idk, man (gn, I'm Californian). I don't know her. If there's any metanarrative lore associated with this episode, it hasn't come my way yet so. Without further ado. Possible explanations.

Julie Siege wrote this because she thought it was interesting and non-offensive.

Julie Siege wrote this because she thought it was in character for them and no other reason.

Julie Siege wrote this because she was writing to the style of the boys club she was working in. Remember that the Supernatural writers room was a very macho environment, especially S4-5.

Julie Siege wrote this as a way of trying to gain acceptance in that space. See above.

Julie Siege didn't write this. Kripke era scripts were highly collaborative and a single writer would rarely be responsible for the entire script [my source is the 4.03 commentary track. See the superwiki page for a link to a transcript for that]

Modifiers on the above: She didn't write it, 1) but she liked it, 2) but she didn't care, 3) and she didn't like it but kept quiet bc boys club, or 4) and she didn't like it and argued against it but was shot down. Oh and 5) It was added in after the script was out of her hands entirely.

Julie Siege didn't write this. It was ad libbed in or it came into creation on the day of filming some other way (directorial choice? idk how these things work)

All of this specifically to say. At the end of the day you really just don't know if a writer is responsible for small moments or certain lines, particularly in the Kripke era. I have other thoughts about the probability of such things in the other eras but that's a post for another time.

So like. Yeah. It's hard to attribute certain specific items or "crimes" to certain writers unless you definitely know for sure and with confirmation (or unless there are observable patterns that heavily suggest it) that it was something that they wrote or endorsed. In the Kripke era.

There's a S1 or S2 extra (i think it was for 1.03 dead in the water) where i think it was Sera Gamble who says. People will come up to you about an episode you wrote and be like, oh i really liked this line! But most of the time it was a line that someone else wrote. Which is basically the tl;dr for this post.

So yeah tl;dr: the inner workings of television writing are more complex than one might initially assume, so don't assume anything. (Insert my prior disclaimers here.)

[juliesiege]

hey did you know that apparently ben edlund and sera gamble share the same birthday, 18 years apart? wild. anyway happy September 20 to these guys

Someone remind me to talk about gamble. She was literally SO young...

[juliesiege]

at this rate i will literally never get to this so let me just slap some stuff down to make it easier in the future if i ever do get to it

SHE WAS TWENTY-ONE WHEN SHE WAS HIRED AS A WRITER FOR SUPERNATURAL

these aren’t the earliest credits on her imdb 

(from tucker’s wikipedia page)

now, I’m very unfamiliar with how important age is in the writing/directing/producing side of the entertainment industry and writers DO have to start somewhere, but this is very young. now, i haven’t taken the time to check the ages of all credited episode writers in the writers room... i don’t even have an exact age for tucker, though i do know she said she was 6 in the early 80′s so at least five years older than gamble . 

but from what i’ve seen of the s1 extras, kripke IMMEDIATELY took to her writing. for context

kripke is 10 years older than her. i think they ended up working pretty closely because. while it’s been a while since i’ve thought about it, sera was basically his second in command (sorry for my wording i don’t how else to write this)

in supernatural, rank/seniority is literally written into the episode order. i don’t know about other tv shows, but this is consistent for almost all episodes of supernatural. so from this, we can see that gamble basically was the second most important at latest by s3 (where she was 23/24, still very young)

and then, when kripke left the show, she became the showrunner...in 2010. when she was 26/27. a) i feel like this is very young? which is not to say that young people can’t achieve amazing things or that people at that age shouldn’t be showrunners...but this was basically the first show she had any meaningful experience with not to mention that b) she’s a woman, and we all know about how “macho” the supernatural writer’s room is... which goes with point c) kripke ran an extremely tight ship. so with these three things together, it absolutely wouldn’t surprise me if the writers room treated her authority with less respect, and because of her relative inexperience, she was also probably less equipped to get them to listen to her.

so whenever i see structural flaws in the gamble era, i can’t really help but take it with this in consideration. and like on a personal level, i find her showrunning to be very emotionally heavy with little emotional catharsis, which is not something that I prefer, but i’ve seen people be extremely complementary of her showrunning, so i know that she’s a very capable at what she does, especially with more years under her belt now.

but idk. whenever i look at the gamble era and see how lopsided it is in pacing, i don’t go like. wow the gamble era sucks. because we don’t know if that was other writers bucking her authority. we don’t know if the first parts of season 7 are such a slog as a deliberate choice on her part (because the last handful of episodes are so entertaining lmao it redeems the season for me) because there’s a solid chance it might not be.

the 2nd ep writer in season 6 was adam glass, who was incidentally also a new hire to the show. the 3rd was edlund, who was the 2nd ep writer for season 7, so i assume he, if anyone, would be most likely to step up in any additional help showrunning was needed. and from everything that we know about edlund, he actually disliked the “macho” aspects of the supernatural writer’s room. this, however, could’ve impacted his authority as well. the conclusion of this paragraph is that i don’t have one. (edlund is 6 years older than kripke, for whatever that’s worth) i just think that putting her as sole showrunner was also setting her up for almost certain failure, regardless of if edlund was able to help

maybe i need to watch the gamble era commentary vids/tracks. i mean listening to the commentary tracks period can give you a really good idea of how various people interacted with each other (kripke for instance was also complementary of carver’s writing and considered him exceptionally skilled with 80s references. thanks 4.03 commentary track! yes that’s the famous brickhouse stud track) but frankly i hate listening to things, and this does directly get in the way of me forming more concrete opinions. whoops!

gamble left supernatural in 2012, after finishing season 7. carver would return from showrunning frequency (which i believe was cancelled after 2 seasons, explaining his 2 year absence during gamble’s 2 year era), and despite missing those 2 years, he returned with the most seniority and was made showrunner, i’ve heard in order to let supernatural die with grace, which we all know didn’t happen. i believe we also know he worked more closely with edlund? i don’t know anything about their working relationship with each other, but given their shared focus on cas-centric narratives, i imagine they’d be...comrades in the writers room. sorry again for my wording i don’t know a better word and it’s 4am.

but back to gamble. she left in 2012. in 2013, she made (wrote, produced) a movie then worked as a writer on aquarius from 2015-2016. after that, she showran the magicians and then you. i’ve never watched any of you, but from everything i hear, people are very complimentary of that so. i mean what can i say other than that i really do love that for her.

Someone remind me to talk about gamble. She was literally SO young...

[juliesiege]

can't take this. bedlund is great and i love him (conversational) but he is not the ONLY one who cared about cas. don't say that while jeremy carver is standing Right There

[juliesiege]

now's the time i guess. I'll probably RB this with more thoughts later but rn I'm trying to fall asleep and i think this will fix me. basically.

In 4.07 It's the Great Pumpkin Sam Winchester, Dean acts in some way that could be interpreted as interest toward a high schooler (at oldest 18, while Dean is probably 29 which. Oof) (it's been a while since I watched the exact scene but I remember thinking that it could potentially be interpreted otherwise, though that might be my Dean apologist/understander brain speaking. He's performing half-hearted interest. Maybe. Idk. I don't make the decisions, I just come up with the possible answers. Take this entire parenthetical with a grain of salt lol). Anyway here's the superwiki transcript.

(Now without watching it, my parenthetical still stands. From this I can't discern shit about Dean's intentions. Dean licks his lips constantly. He licks his lips before having a thought. Sam also has a history of taking a lot of what Dean does in the context of women in bad faith. Note also that Sam himself is the first person to vocalize it and the framing of a potentially underage girl as jailbait is in itself a potential yikes. But that's not what I'm here to discuss.)

I'm here to discuss. Is Julie Siege responsible for this. Idk, man (gn, I'm Californian). I don't know her. If there's any metanarrative lore associated with this episode, it hasn't come my way yet so. Without further ado. Possible explanations.

Julie Siege wrote this because she thought it was interesting and non-offensive.

Julie Siege wrote this because she thought it was in character for them and no other reason.

Julie Siege wrote this because she was writing to the style of the boys club she was working in. Remember that the Supernatural writers room was a very macho environment, especially S4-5.

Julie Siege wrote this as a way of trying to gain acceptance in that space. See above.

Julie Siege didn't write this. Kripke era scripts were highly collaborative and a single writer would rarely be responsible for the entire script [my source is the 4.03 commentary track. See the superwiki page for a link to a transcript for that]

Modifiers on the above: She didn't write it, 1) but she liked it, 2) but she didn't care, 3) and she didn't like it but kept quiet bc boys club, or 4) and she didn't like it and argued against it but was shot down. Oh and 5) It was added in after the script was out of her hands entirely.

Julie Siege didn't write this. It was ad libbed in or it came into creation on the day of filming some other way (directorial choice? idk how these things work)

All of this specifically to say. At the end of the day you really just don't know if a writer is responsible for small moments or certain lines, particularly in the Kripke era. I have other thoughts about the probability of such things in the other eras but that's a post for another time.

So like. Yeah. It's hard to attribute certain specific items or "crimes" to certain writers unless you definitely know for sure and with confirmation (or unless there are observable patterns that heavily suggest it) that it was something that they wrote or endorsed. In the Kripke era.

There's a S1 or S2 extra (i think it was for 1.03 dead in the water) where i think it was Sera Gamble who says. People will come up to you about an episode you wrote and be like, oh i really liked this line! But most of the time it was a line that someone else wrote. Which is basically the tl;dr for this post.

So yeah tl;dr: the inner workings of television writing are more complex than one might initially assume, so don't assume anything. (Insert my prior disclaimers here.)

[juliesiege]

This shit needs a pinned post so here's the facts:

You know who I am. If you don't, eh whatever

Early 20s, BSCS, academia and conflict avoidant. this doesn't mean i can't analyze literature or think about media critically or can't see nuance tho lmfao

Metanarrative-invested

Carver era best era. Dabb era worst. Dabb era denialism even. S12 gets a pass bc it has carver influences. Yockey and Perez eps also get a pass.

I'm a kripke and carver non-spn show consumer. Stream frequency. Carver did that one with Nancy Won (who wrote 3 spn eps). Watch it immediately after s8+9.01 for some helpful insight into who carver is as a writer

This isnt a Jenny-Klein's-writing positive blog space. This isn't a major facet of my interest tho but it could be contentious. I will probably post about it.

I might also talk about the show color grading here. It's my passion. Fred Julito where did you go. I hope you are well. Sam Gilling and Matt Olson are simply not on your level.

I intend to tag writers by their last names, eras, season groups if applicable (1-3, 4-5, 8, 9-11, 12, 13-15, 15), episodes (x.xx), and characters by the shortest versions of their name

[juliesiege]

Need to also remember to rewrite and post my Julie siege thoughts. Especially after that post about bedlund talking about how much of a (toxically) masculine space the writers room. I think it provides a lot of support for one of my apologist theories.

[juliesiege]

Someone remind me to talk about gamble. She was literally SO young...

[juliesiege]

ok sorry can't get over it because no one is listening but the dabb era really did turn sam into the Good Man to dean's Bad Man. and i don't think dabb MEANT to villainize dean. he just doesn't grasp the nuances of like everything and how fucked up a lot of the stuff his era made dean do IS. but i am full on going to blame dabb for the sanitization of sam's character because sam is NOT a Good Man.

[juliesiege]

Anyway i still have trouble remembering after all this time that the Kripke era is the longest showrunner era in all of supernatural. I KNOW this is because of our tendency to focus, as a fandom to overfocus on the Cas seasons (4-5) but i think I'd also like to attribute my overfamiliarity with all of these episodes (watched them at least twice in my life, dissected them enough for them to stick in my brain SOMEWHERE) and the overall put-togetherness of this era to make it really flow. I'm familiar. It's cohesive. So it goes quickly

[juliesiege]

You know what I'm turning this into my writers room thoughts blog. You can't stop me.