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What I’ve Read
The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction by Nick Groom – Great Queer Supernatural Re-Watch item – This was a great little book that covered about 400 years of artistic trends in English (and later American) architecture and literature with about 150 pages, and I think it did a really good job! I certainly learned far more about the English trend towards regarding Gothic tribes as somehow “English” came from a need to understand their own culture in opposition to Roman/ Romantic/European values. You can see the roots of English Exceptionalism growing out of the whole thing, and the ties to the Gothic novel – fascinating! I particularly liked the chapter at the end that talked about the ways American gothic movements tend to have different skeletons in their closets than English, which honestly felt like a great discussion element. I ended up being so intrigued that I ordered some collected works of Poe and Lovecraft, both of whom lean into the whole issue of racism as the specter in the soul of American Gothic. Highly reccommend.

Roger Crenshaw: The Wolves of the West by Taylor Titmouse – This is a goofy little porn novella (available on itch.io) about a folklorist who has a fling with a quartet of bandits who kidnap him off a train. It’s delightful and accompanied by some very nice art. It’s set about the turn of the century and the main character is trans. I will probably read the other two books in the series – you don’t quite have to read them in order. This is about 30 pages and very fun.

Roger Crenshaw and the Vampires of New Haven by Taylor Titmouse – I wrote up this journal on Tuesday and then ended up reading the one, too! The first in the series, this one had a little more backstory on our favorite folklorist and also, some vampires at Yale. Pretty sexy, I think I preferred the Wolves of the West but both are great. Content warning: Connecticut

In “Not A Book” news, I finished Season One of Malevolent and really enjoyed it! It’s a dark supernatural gothic horror fiction podcast focused on Arthur, a detective who picks up a cursed book and gets blinded and a new passenger in the form of an otherworldly voice in his head. They fight crime! Or, rather, they are stuck together while they investigate the secrets, cults, and eldritch forces that pushed the voice out of its own world into Arthur’s head. It starts rather inhuman and antagonistic, but resolves eventually into a kind of care for Arthur that feels genuine. I find the “sharing a body” trope compelling – it takes normal human interdependence and intimacy to an exaggerated limit and then pushes it further. If you like Venom (movie or comics), you’d probably find this central relationship compelling. The podcast’s worldbuilding is Lovecraft-based (minus the overt racism) so I’m enjoying the tour around fictional New England towns with dark secrets. There are three finished seasons and the fourth is ongoing, episodes are about 40 minutes. The main podcast is an edited combination of shorter episodes where Patreon members are presented with weekly shorter passages, and a poll to decide what Arthur-and-co should do next.

What I’m Reading

Babel – Xing Book Club – 16% Moderately devastating.
Dracula Daily is back! Dracula’s “lizard fashion” for going out remains delightful - 8%
Carry On Tamryn Eradani -picked this back up after not touching it for months (since November??) -37%
Post Mortem File 3 by Furiosophie – this is great but I mistimed where I was in the canon reading and I might actually have to watch Rebels and read three other books before I can come back to this. SIGH.
Freefall – Umei_No_Mai – the adventures of their OC Jedi character.

On Hold:
Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn (1991) – 39% - Static
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection - Julia Kristeva - static
True Colors by Karen Traviss
Beauty by Robin McKinley
What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Monroe (of XKCD fame) – 8% - Static

What I’ll Read Next

Dowry of Blood (Necromancers Book Club)
Watchmaker’s Daughter (Discord Book Club)
Count of Monte Cristo (Discord Book Club)

Owned and need to read: California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Tom Stoppard, Invention of love, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon, Alisha Rai Partners in Crime, the Right Swipe

What I've Read

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - Xing Book Club - I adored this - like Tamsyn Muir's Nona the Ninth, this is written from the POV of a character who has the least information about where he is and how he got there, and the novel is largely about him finding out what happened. This is about a haunted house, maybe, from the view point of the living man doing the haunting, or maybe a labyrinth from the view of the minotaur. The atmospheric descriptions of the vast and impossible structure put me in mind of descriptions of hikers talking about walking great swaths of a trail and getting to directly experience their own minds paying attention to minute details of the world around them. I have heard it compared to House of Leaves, which seems somewhat fair - they have both have an epistolary style and a focus on an impossible space - but Piranesi is far gentler. I really, really enjoyed it - read it in a day - and I'm a bit sad I can't sum it up better! The mere plot of the thing doesn't really live up to the experience.

A Gentleman and An Officer by Trudemaethien (Restricted) https://archiveofourown.org/works/46045405 -Star Wars Clone Wars AU bit of military fic, Cody/Rex

The Creche by Blue_Sunshine https://archiveofourown.org/works/36847618 - AU Star Wars fic with a bit of a series. Anakin/Obi-Wan. Anakin goes down to the Jedi Temple's creche for the first time, after being raised mostly by Qui-Gon Jinn, and meets the crechemaster.

the first church of the end of the world by withbloodstainedclothingon https://archiveofourown.org/works/4007173 - Supernatural - Dean and Lisa and Castiel, AU of The End

What I'm Reading
True Colors - Karen Traviss - 23% - static - This is a Star Wars "Legends" novel that builds out a lot of the Mandalorian culture by focusing on the military fiction adventures of a subset of clone commandos who were raised and trained by one Mandalorian trainer in particular. There's a bunch of awkward stuff in this particular novel around a pregnancy and some real patriarchal BS, which is why I'm slow with it. But it's good background for my "Clones are Fun, Actually" reading.

A Restless Truth - Freya Marske - 55% - This is a fun fantasy with ship-board mystery and a sapphic romance that is both sweet and quite sexy. The first book in this trilogy was a delight and this is also adorable. I started this about three days ago and I have been blitzing thru.

Too Like The Lightning - Ada Palmer - A re-read bc a couple of my friends are starting it. It's a future mystery with a writing style like a 18th century novel, all breathless and Englightnment that I really enjoy.

Underline the Black by not_poignant https://archiveofourown.org/works/41396784 - Not_Poignant writes some really interesting fannish-feeling original work, and this seems like it's an Omegaverse AU of that - twisty and very hurt/moderate comfort.

On Earth as It Is in Heaven by samyazaz https://archiveofourown.org/works/833193 - Soulmate AU of Vikings - You don't need to know anything other than the first season or a vague sense of how history went down

What I'll Read Next

Powers of Horror - Chapter 1 - For the Great Queer Supernatural Re-Watch. This is a nonfiction theory book that is referred to in many of the horror-focused sources that we have previously read.

The Gothic A Very Short Introduction - After the last reading we did kind of didn't get into what The Gothic is in literature, I figured that this might be a good little supplemental piece.

The Calculating Stars - Xing Book Club

Mexican Gothic - Discord Book Club - A re-read for me, but I enjoyed the book the first time and I think it will be fun to get into again.

Babel - Looks like it will on the Hugos list eventually, I'm trying to get out ahead of things

Owned and need to read: California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Tom Stoppard, invention of love. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon, Alisha Rai Partners in Crime, the Right Swipe, Aphorisms of Kerishdar

Owned and Read/Reading: ~~Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, Susanna Clarke's Pirenesi,True Colors by Karen Traviss~~

Current Music: flogging molly

What I've Read
Nona the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir - Oh, man, I really enjoyed this book. Partially because I finally got to the point in the series where I feel like all the players might, at last, be on the board, and we can finally see how they are all interacting.

There was so much love and so much sorrow in this book. I have so many points that I adored and I want to keep spoilers off people's main pages, but I might get into it in the comments. Nona was just such a lovely character to visit with and I'm glad that the trilogy expanded to give her enough space.

The bits with John going over his background and how he got to the place he is - that was fascinating and got the most discussion of any part of the books in the discord I was chatting with people about. I really adored the whole thing. And now I join the multitude waiting for the final book.

Penric's Mission - Lois McMaster Bujold - This was the palate cleanser after burning thru three of the Locked Tomb books in short order. Little did I realize, I actually skipped one novella in between! I might go back to it, but honestly, I liked the twists on Penric's future and Desdemona's new friends in this story, and I might not circle back.

Men with Stakes: Masculinity and the Gothic in US TV - Julia M. Wright - I picked this to read as part of the Great Queer Supernatural Re-Watch and while I think it was a good review of a number of shows and cogent points about the genre's relationship to masculinity, I found the writing distracting. There was no clear line between argumentation and summary, I felt like "the Gothic" was never actually defined, and overall, I feel like I would have gotten more out of this book if I had read some of the essasy in the bibliography before I started on this. Not a failure, just not quite where I wanted the next step in my journey to go.

A Half-Built Garden - Ruthanna Emrys - For the Xing Book Club and I really enjoyed this. It was clearly written by someone who loved Star Trek and science fiction and it's a loving addition to that canon. The author's note called the book "diaperpunk" which I sort of agree with - this is science fiction where "think of the children" is not an empty proverb, but tied to specific children, with specific parents and a specific place in time and humanity's history.

It's also, I have previously noted, a book where main character being Jewish has real impacts for how they interact with aliens. At one point, a character thinks, Man, am I going to end up in some future scornful halakhic commentary for the decision I am making about this alien's ritual? and I am delighted. Aliens at passover! Chametz in space! Kashrut on a floating constructed island run by AI!

What I'm Reading
True Colors - Karen Traviss - Have slowed down on this but the fanfic consumption is not slower.

What I'll Read Next

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke -Xing book club
Edit to add: Powers of Horror by Julia Kristeva

Dowry of Blood
Too Like the Lightning - Audiobook, maybe

Owned and need to read: Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, and ~~Susanna Clarke's Pirenesi,~~ California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, ~~True Colors by Karen Traviss~~, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Tom Stoppard, invention of love. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon, Alisha Rai Partners in Crime, the Right Swipe, Aphorisms of Kerishdar

What I've Read

just me against the sky by magneticwave - https://archiveofourown.org/works/42315729 (48K) Bat-family alternate universe where Tim Drake is a girl and never became Robin but was a different and kind of badass. Girl!Tim/Girl!Jason, but mostly pre-relationship. This is charming and a tender and wonderful look at who Tim is and could have been, in a slightly diffrent world than the comics are showing us. (I think I came across it in the bookmarks of SPQR (https://archiveofourown.org/users/spqr) whose work in Mandalorian fandom is probably why I got into Star Wars prequel fanfic. ) "Just me against the sky" was a great fic to read, in part because it made me realize just how much of magneticwave's fic I have read in some many different fandoms. I went on a binge and re-read "staring down the barrel of the hot sun" and read "i want your warmth to stay beside me" for the first time and a few other shorter things - go, read their stuff, it's amazing.

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/83f3410a-8112-4958-93ff-6a7fbb184ff1) (Read by Michael Boatman, who deserves an Oscar) Read for Discord Book Club This book was totally outside my normal perview - a historical novel about John Brown's last few years of life, as told from a newly freed young mand who was mascarading as a girl for most of the novel. It's hilarious, it's painful, it's keenly attentive to the damage that suffering causes to the human soul under slavery, and it bounces between reverent and irreverent like a tennis ball in a dryer. Highly recommend. ( Somehow the book group discussion did not get into trans themes at all, but this book is from 2013 and the author is my mom's age so I don't think trans issues were at all on his mind. But it would make for a real discussion about gender as performance and how that works in the context of race for the space of the book.)

What I'm Reading

Phoenix Extravagant - by Yoon Ha Lee - (Read by Emily Woo Zeller) to the end of Chapter 11, for Xing Book Club - Man, this book is good. It's clearly cribbing off the Japanese invasion of Korea in a fantasy setting for languages and cultural notes, the main character is interesting. It's interested in the meaning and value of art to the culture that created it and what an invading culture values in those same works of art - the main character is an artist and they are dealing with the delicate balance of making a living under occupation while maintaining an identity as an artist and a person in their own culture. It doesn't cut quite as close to the soul as a A Memory Called Empire but that might be due to the fact that the narrator is a painter and I'm not. Lovely book, blitzed thru it as an audiook to the stopping point for the book club.

A Half Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys (Read by Kate Handford) - 37% read - also for Xing Book Club, but it's the next book out- A pastoral Earth that revolted and rebuilt to stave off climate apocalypse makes first contact with some aliens who have some fascinatingly different ideas about where sentient species should end up. Great themes! - people compare it to Le Guin and I see the commonalities but I'm going to see how it sticks the landing. The aliens see motherhood, specifically gestational motherhood, as a key sign of leadership ability, and so the main character's relationship with the aliens really has a lot of baby care woven in. Polyamory! Jews in the future! The alluring glitter of apocalyptic corporate culture in the far future. Espionage! Alternate forms of government!

Harrow the Ninth - 86% - Tamsyn Muir - When I get done with this book, I'm doing to have to do some screaming about it. What's notable about the reading experience is that so many people have told me that they read and enjoyed this series that there's a whole LIST of people I can go and scream at when something absurd happens. Is this the experience that people were having reading the Harry Potter books as they came out? Because I didn't, I was an awkward kid who read books to get away from people and not to connect with them, but man, I could see how the allure of this feeling would linger as a warm and fuzzy memory well past the point I finish this book. (Not to the point of remaining financially loyal to the author if she starts, ya know, targeting peopel for stocastic violence thru twitter, jesus fucking christ, some Harry Potter fans have some major fucking blinders on for their asshole) I accidentally created a bookclub around The Locked Tomb Series and its going well!

Men With Stakes - Julia Wright - still at 65% - need to finish the book for March 12th
A Very Good Book for the Great Queer Supernatural Re-Watch! Highly recommend for people who want to think about the show and the way it fit into concepts of masculinity as part of the landscape of tv. I wish the author would define her concept of "the gothic" somewhere in the book!

What I'll Read Next

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - Xing Book Club

Audiobooks from Libby that I need to get to: Spare by Harry No Last Name, Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, Re-reads planned via audiobook for A Taste of Gold and Iron and Mexican Gothic (I got some friends to read it and it's landed very well and I want to talk about it again!)

Owned and need to read: Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, and ~~Susanna Clarke's Pirenesi~~ California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, True Colors by Karen Traviss, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Tom Stoppard, invention of love. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon, Alisha Rai Partners in Crime, the Right Swipe, Aphorisms of Kerishdar

Work in Progress Wednesday (The Return)
Sock Madness was once again too much for me- I got one sock done and sent it in to be a cheerleader rather than on a team. I found this technique (intarsia in the round) a good stretch of skills but no way I was getting that done in time for the second sock. That said, I have started the second sock and I'm knitting it flat, against the rules of the competition socks, and it's sooooo much easier. Intarsia in the round, kids, not even once.

What I've Read

The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison - (Cemetaries of Amalo #2) This is the second novel focusing on Thara Celehar, who combines Father Brown with noir detective in a fantasy Victorian setting. This book will not make much sense without the previous two books in this universe, the wildly popular Goblin Emperor and the first book on Celehar's life, Witness for the Dead. I really enjoyed this novel - it's got an overarching plot around the murders of a noblewoman and a foundling child, but also combines moments of gentle episodes with other people who come to ask Celehar for help speaking to the dead on more mundane matters (like finding where a recently deceased baker hid his famous scone recipe before he died). The main plot is not quite as tight as the Witness for the Dead, but I am here for the smaller scale that allowed some of the personal relationships that Celehar created and sustained in the last novel to breathe. Addison, aka Sarah Monette, is a great writer and I would generally recommend this. I suspect from the ending, which wraps up some of the emotional threads of the books but not all, is leading to a third book ... and a quick check confirms that. (And also that there are two short stories in this series that I had no idea where there.) I don't suggest reading this book without reading the Goblin Emperor first, which does most of the heavy lifting on the worldbuilding.

Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera - This is from 1987, there was a film in 2002 which was when I heard of this. I really enjoyed this novel, which was not much like what I expected! Ihimaera has a really clear voice and while the novel does some explaining for a non-Maori audience, I had the feeling of being a bit slow on the mark at certain points - which I usually take to be the sign of a book written from a cultural perspective that's different enough from mine that the editors haven't totally Americanized it. Tho this book focuses on a child, Kahu, the great-granddaughter of a Maori tribal leader, Aripana, Kahu is not the main perspective. The narrator is Aripana's adult grandson, Kahu's uncle, who views his family and community with affection, respect, and occasional irony. In places, this is a hard read - Aripana is dismissive and unkind to his great-grandchild because she's not a boy and therefore, he thinks, not worthy of a leadership role. But the book makes a point that his viewpoint is countered from within the community. While there are White characters and culture in this book, there isn't a "Nice White Person" character to distract from the actual narrative. I do think Apipana had a really important drive for cultural preservation, which makes a strong case that Maori identity and worldview has a specific lens to view the world- losing that lens would be devastating to their community and culture, and Aripana's greatest efforts are focused on preserving it and passing it on to the younger generation. (Sidebar: I am nearly certain the narrator, Rawiri, is queer - he seems like he has a romance with a man that takes him to Papua New Guinea for a couple of years, tho nothing is explicit. Ihimaera is gay and I looked up an interview with him that alluded to his childhood having some commonalities with Kahu's. I was delighted to stumble across a queer writer when I wasn't expecting the family connection.) I thought this was a great book, I am glad my expectations about a blandly cute childhood story were challenged. I've ordered more books by Ihimaera from the library now.

I read a bunch of fic, but nothing even approaching the 50K mark so none of it really makes the cut.

What I'm Reading
Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell -For the Great Queer Supernatural ReWatch - on Chapter 6, and we are finally getting firmly into the realm of film Westerns, rather than novels. Chap 5 made me want to re-read Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville - Look. So, I kind of flopped out of Dracula Daily but I did sign up for Whale Weekly, where you read Moby Dick in the traditional order in the form of emails sent to your inbox. I'm here for the wild nonsense Ishmael is selling. It's already really goofy and I have too much history of the Essex to not enjoy the irony of the start.

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - Book Club - This is slower going now. I thought that a Big Spoiler plot event that I had heard about would take place somewhere in the latter quarter of the book. Instead it took place in the front half, and I'm tied up with trying to figure out where the plot can go from here. When I have something I'm not super enthralled to read, I often like to have a spoiler or two to help me engage with the plot and keep momentum up.

walk by faith/tell no one what you've seen by Killbothtwins - A Star Wars Obi-Wan time travels back to his padawan self story. This is adorable and I'm really enjoying the writing - old Obi-Wan has all the compassion we see in his original series appearances and he's feels like a man who's been thru a war and gone into hiding, and he's like, 13. I don't normally want to deal with too much time travel fixit fic with Star Wars, but this is maybe making me interested in the subgenre. It's part of the much larger series, The Massive Machinery of Hope, and I'm looking forward to getting into it.
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31805044

What I'll Read Next

Library books in the house:
Maul: Lockdown - Joe Schreiber
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera
Riot Baby - Rochi Onyeuchi
The Silence of the Wilting Skin - Tlotlo Tsamaase
An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon

Newly purchased: At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey (aka, Xiaq, a fic that started as a Check, Please! hockey webcomic fanfic starring Kent Parson and OMC)

Owned and need to read: Upright Women Wanted (Which I just randomly read a great essay by this author on being liberated from narratives of queer grief and death), NK Jemisin's The World We Make, Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, California Bones, the Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, Penric's Demon, True Colors by Karen Traviss

I have been watching a lot of classic horror films as part of the Great Queer Rewatch of Supernatural.

If you haven't seen Night of the Living Dead (1968), it fell into the public domain, so some very good copies are around on Youtube, I watched this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw50caHk62g - there are also color version if that floats your boat, but I found the black and white one particularly effecting.

Just now, it's hard for me not to see this film as a lynching movie. It's not, precisely, about a lynching. But it's not not about a lynching.

This film is charming in the way that shoestring budget, actor-focused, tight narratives working with an interesting concept kind of a film are always charming to me. (Similarly, Christopher Eccelston's Doctor Who, Bound by the Wachowski Sisters, classic Twilight Zone episodes)

Our hero, Ben is played by an incredibly skilled actor, literally an acting teacher for most of his career, who makes Ben kind and competent and authoritative without cruelty. He protects people, he is kind to someone who's breaking down under the stress, he's smart and decisive and calls people on their shit. He's allowed to get angry and punch someone who put his life in danger, and we're allowed to cheer him on when he does.

I found out afterwards that the role of Ben had been written for a white actor, and then when Duane Jones auditions, they cast him without re-writing the part. That is important. Because there are ways that Ben behaves that are not allowed for a specifically Black character in 1968, and I'm pretty sure that a lot of them would not be allowed for a Black actor in 2021. ("Allowed" here in the sense of, "someone would find this unbelievable for a Black person to act like a fully human person who is competent and smart, and re-write that, because Black characters are not allowed to be unquestionably heroic in the same ways as a white actor is.")

The fact that they opted NOT to re-write around Duane Jones's race meant that there are scenes at the end of the film where Good Heroic White Men With Guns come to save the day, and they offhandedly kill Ben and they drag his body to be burned in a pyre with the zombies, and all I could see were the photos of murdered Black people that run in Ken Burns documentaries about the Civil War and about jazz, and all I could see were the white supremacists breaking into the Capitol Building with plastic handcuffs.

Having survived the night in a house surrounded by crazed, cannibalistic undead white people who were turned into monsters before they could be buried, Ben has saved himself! He lived! He made it! He saved himself! And then white men with guns showed up and killed him casually, without understanding that he's a human being, because they can kill him at at distance. Because they have guns. Because no one organizes them well enough to make them fucking check who they are shooting at.

I know that George Romero has talked about not re-writing Ben to be 'more black' and deciding not to change the ending, and that he didn't intend to make this a commentary about race. I really, really recommend the movie as being an excellent and touching film, with good performances and sympathetic characters.

And, also, I'm having really hard time not seeing this as a movie about a deeply good man being murdered by a white mob, because that's what's in my head right now.

Back from my Holiday Hiatus!

Visiting my sister (with pre-visit covid testing and a quarantine before and after) was lovely and I was very happy that neither of us had to spend Christmas alone.

I have totally failed to investigate the Yuletide posts and I am going to be working thru a LOT of backlogged recs. Yay!

I have a bunch of notifications to sort thru from DW, so if I have not yet replied to your comment, forgive me!

The Great Queer Rewatch of Supernatural has reached 1.20- "Dead Man's Blood," and wow, the show loved making John Winchester a terrible father right up until they narratively would have to make him the real villain of the show, and then they dodge! In a Season One that is full of stories that portray real world male violence and give is a small-s supernatural excuses so that the white men in authority are never at fault, wow, this one is real specific and real bad!

(Spoiler for Season One thru "Dead Man's Blood"

(- even if we never examine later issues with John Winchester's behavior to sabotage his sons' futures, Season One REALLY leans into the 'hunting=alcoholism' narrative for John. The reveal that he'd put money into college savings funds for his sons Before Their Mother Died is meant to be a sign that he wanted something different for them, but then the reveal that he 'spent the money on ammo' is just a fucking stab in the gut. Yeah, they laugh, and there really ought to be more bitterness to it. This is SO CLEARLY the addiction trope of a parent raiding the kid's savings for their drugs, and the show doesn't seem to realize how deeply unsympathetic that makes John.
(As my dear friend has said before, "He did his best. But he should have tried the best of somebody better.")

Yeah, so the show with the characters who cannot stay dead is, apparently, not staying dead. The end of Supernatural has felt like a shockingly active time for the fandom!

Which is not to say that I recommend getting into it. I don't. This show is Not Good. As Benoit Blanc says, it compels me, though.

I've been undertaking what I'm calling A Fully Spoiled Rewatch with my friend, iphys. My idea is largely modeled on a podcast I have really enjoyed (and highly recommend!), Still Pretty , a 'fully spoiled' podcast with Lani and Noelli hosting it and analyzing each episode in the context of the canon and their media studies background.

So, what's the ethos behind this rewatch?
1. Queer Reading - The show does not really *want* a queer audience or a female audience, but, we're here and we're going to be reading the show with a particular interest in that. Why do people read Dean as queer? What parts of the text support this? What parts have heterosexual explanations that we, two queers, would not have noticed without careful analysis?

2. Fully Spoiled - Taking each episode in the larger context of the canon, and drawing parallels where we find them. (Example: Season One's "Faith" has the DNA for Season Four's "Lazarus Rising," and also echoes into the Series Finale.)

3. What You See Is What You Get - Fandom tends to really encourage reading the text with an understanding that there are generous margins, places where you can set a story or speculate a headcanon into being, or tease out a thread they left dangling. Fandom lives and breathes in the nooks and crannies of a text. But, there's also something to saying, This is what the show put on the screen, so let's give that more weight in our analysis than the spaces they left blank. As a corollary, deuterocanonical sources like the Journal of John Winchester (as available online) are also sources we're looking at - but where the show contradicts those external sources, the show wins.

4. Do Your Homework - Season One is really a love letter to horror films, so we've been doing our homework and watching those (Example: Season One's "Home" does not really make sense without watching Poltergeist, and I liked the episode a lot more after having watched it. I watched Texas Chain Saw Massacre yesterday! It was really good!) Kripke cited Kerouac's On The Road as an influence, so we're going to read that. We're also doing some academic reading - I've got Carol Clover's Men Women and Chain Saws out of the library for this very reason.

5. Who's the Main Character? - Some episodes are clearly meant to highlight of the Winchester brothers above another, some are balanced, and some of the later ones are not even really about the Winbros at all! It makes it a fun question to ask.

Already, this approach has yielded some really interesting insights!

One of the weirder, but more revealing episodes of season one, "Home," where the Winbros return to their childhood home to find it haunted, are really much more comprehensible with the source material that they are drawn from -the film Poltergeist, which focuses really intensely on a mother saving her child from a spiritual/supernatural danger.

Likewise, I had a really interesting insight into John Winchester that I never had before - that he reads to a straight audience as feeling tremendous but unspoken *guilt* for failing to save his wife from a supernatural death in their own home prior to the start of the series. Which might be one of those things that the show's writers, largely straight, had assumed would be Too Obvious To Need Saying, but honestly was quite a revelation to me! (Not one that reflects well on John, not even a little, but inflects his abuse towards his sons in a different light.) It's implied that he failed as a husband/man in a duty to protect his wife - and that's not a dynamic I had ever once considered as being even a little bit part of *my* conception of marriage! But is very clearly part of some ideals set out for a heterosexual couple.