thuviaptarth | Recs: The women of Supernatural

I keep writing posts about Supernatural and women and vidding and deleting them unposted, because it's all been said before and no one wants to hear it said again. So have some recs instead:

Vids

sisabet and

sockkpuppett, Women's Work
This is still my favorite Supernatural vid of all time. And also the one that I feel offers the most accurate depiction of canon.

sweetestdrain, Lagrimas
Supernatural is Mary's nightmare, take one: S1-S2

mithborien, The Devil's Inside My Head
Supernatural is Mary's nightmare, take two: S1-S4

sweetiejen, We Are Mice
Strikingly parallels Ruby and Bela's journeys in Season 3.

proofpudding, So in Love with the Wrong World (Bela)
I didn't think there was enough footage for a Bela vid, but

proofpudding makes it work, illustrating both the obvious parallels between Bela and Dean and the heartbreaking differences. (Also, this vid introduced me to Florence and the Machine, who are probably my favorite musical discovery of the year. That voice! Florence is fucking amazing. The same song was used for a very different video by

di_br, Darkening World (Merlin, Guinever and Morgana), which isn't as successful in pulling all its different pieces together but has compelling individual sections.)

0mindthegap0, Our Time (Ruby)
Honestly, this is not how I saw Ruby in Season Four, but damn, I wish it was. Because she is snarky and kick-ass and fucking better than you. (Especially if your last name is Winchester.)

meg_tdj, Ruby's Lullaby (Ruby)
Ruby's view of Sam in Season Four: You did it all to yourself, baby.

Fiction

cofax7, Her Tracks Are On the Land
If Mary Winchester had a sister. Jossed by Season Four, still a heartbreaker. Cofax has some other excellent SPN fic with original female characters and the Harvelles. Also, she wrote me Ruby fic.

coffee_in_bed, Restlessly Abandoned Homes (Ellen/various); then As it Was, Then Again It Will Be (Ellen gen) ; But Liquor Is Quicker (Dean/Jo)
I love that her Ellen's a grown-up and her Jo knows Winchesters are a bad bargain.

dotfic, Five Times the Harvelles and the Winchesters (Never) Hunted Together
Canon needed this.

hesychasm, The Devil's Gate (Buffyverse crossover, Faith/Jo)
Jo grows up. (I kind of have a weakness for crossovers where Supernatural takes on the Buffyverse and the Buffyverse wins.)

musesfool, Couldn't Stand the Weather (Jo)
I think Dean never called after "Born under a Bad Sign," but I guess it's not much better if he did.

oxoniensis, the sound is breaking all my bones (Sam/Ruby)
I had issues with S4 Ruby. This story made me love her, but more importantly than that, it made me believe in her.

utsusemia, Five Ways Ruby Told the Truth
Man, that last line is a killer.

vinylroad, this will all make perfect sense someday (Sam/Ruby); prayer of saint francis (Sam/Ruby); Coyote Run (Sam/Dean/Jo); furious angels (Sam/Lilith);
I love what she does with mythology -- Christian mythology, the mythology of the show. Her landscapes are gorgeous and sensual. The probable future is my favorite fanfiction about [spoilery character], not to mention one of my favorite fics about crossroads demons.

whereupon, or else (Sam/Dean/Jo); Brutality (Bela); spark (Dean/Bela); untitled (Dean, Sam/Ruby, radical reenvisioning of Ruby); horses (Sam/Jo/Dean)
Lovely prose, strong women making hard choices.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, excellent -- I've never seen most of these vids.

And thank you for the lovely rec! Oddly enough, that story wasn't written out of feminist rage, which is probably just as well. Second the rec for Dot's story, which I so needed after 510.

cofax7 also just wrote Five Finisterre horses the Sarah Connor Chronicles characters would ride, which was my prompt inspired by her SPN Riderverse.

Catherine Weaver's mare is a sleek mare of a shade nobody's ever seen before: a steel-colored grey shading to white on her mane and tail.

Thank you so much for these - I've watched or read a bunch of them, but there are some I've missed and I'm always out for more recs re: the women of SPN. I for one would read any number of posts you'd write about SPN and women and vidding.

Eh, it's a lot of rage that's all been said before. Basically, vidding Ruby made me more aware than ever of how much the SPN writers' prejudices and preconceptions interfere with their storytelling. S3 Ruby is supposed to be a powerful and dangerous figure -- not always powerful enough to get out of trouble, and I love how she takes off in "Jus in Bello" and then later in S4 when the angels show up. Or at least the dialogue tells us she's supposed to be powerful and dangerous, because there are damn few visuals of it, and when they exist, they are often undercutting her strength.

The only times we see her fighting in Season 3 are "The Magnificent Seven," "Malleus Maleficarum," and "No Rest for the Wicked" -- and the only time we see her win a fight is in "The Magnificent Seven." In MM, Dean kills Ruby's nemesis; in "No Rest for the Wicked," Ruby kicks the Winchesters' asses and -- loses the fight. There are very few power shots of Ruby, and when they exist, they are often staged poorly -- the car slowing down to approach her in MM, for example, where the menace of her presence is undercut by her shifting stance.

Consistently, the dialogue tells us she's powerful and knowledgeable, but only shows her being passive or providing exposition. For one of her most powerful acts, such as repairing the Colt, we don't see her providing any repairs, and--this is really critical--we don't see her giving the Colt to Sam. When she dies in S3, she dies off-screen, defeated by Lilith; the body we know as hers falls out of frame as it falls, so that it merely provides a counterpoint for Dean's body. (And of course that accurately represents Sam's POV, he's not going to care about Ruby when Dean has just died; but the point is, the structure of the story, including putting Lilith's leaving the body and Dean dying so close together, is determined by the writers, who clearly did not consider Ruby's death an important enough part of the narrative to show, as they did not generally consider her an important enough part of the narrative to show her qualities rather than talk about them.)

I love your meta and would read acres of it! Thanks for summing up how the writers failed Ruby in S3 with respect to her presence in the visual narrative. That sure is a pattern with women in SPN. And that shot of Ruby with the car approaching her really stuck out for me on a first viewing, with respect to the incongruity of her stance undermining how the shot was framed. P.S. I really thought I remembered commenting on "Low Red Moon" with my LJ handle - I love that Belly song and I thought you said in your reply to that comment that you'd cut a verse out of the song because you couldn't find enough material to make that part Ruby/Lilith, but now I can't find the comment - but in case that whole exchange was just an unusually vivid dream, I should say now I've watched the video some twelve times and it's one of the best SPN vids I've seen. I'm really looking forward to when you post the remastered version, too! Did you make it on a Mac? I use VLC on both the Mac and a couple of different PCs but there's always a horizontal line across the screen around 1:48 when I view the video on either PC.

Sorry for the late response! You are so sweet. I work on a PC and test out vids on my PC and my Linux netbook. Maybe the line will disappear with better source? I am still planning to remaster, but I got distracted by Yuletide and Festivids. :)

I did a verse that was Ruby's background as a witch with heavy Ruby/Tammy, but then cut it because it didn't work with the rest of the vid.

Ruby/Tammy, that makes sense! Good to know I didn't totally imagine the comment. Yeah, Yuletide and Festivids are awesomely distracting. Yay for remastering! :)

Oh, and there was enough source -- I would have liked more, but it existed. What I really missed was source about Ruby's human existence as a witch; I played around with using external source for this, but was unsatisfied. But one thing that was really noticeable was that the actresses were physically *much* more distant than men in the same kind of fight scenes tend to be -- it was much harder to make them look intimate and slashy than it would be to make pretty much any m/m fight scene on the show. Or substitute "noncanonically sexy" and het. The show sort of made a stab at lesbian text but (even aside from the problems of the first queer characters being two demons) didn't really commit to it, and even its uncommitted portrait is explicitly positioned as for the benefit of the male gaze.

What I really missed was source about Ruby's human existence as a witch

Yes!

the actresses were physically *much* more distant than men in the same kind of fight scenes tend to be -- it was much harder to make them look intimate and slashy than it would be to make pretty much any m/m fight scene on the show. Or substitute "noncanonically sexy" and het.

You are absolutely right! I didn't connect the dots on my own, but now it's clear to me.

The show sort of made a stab at lesbian text but (even aside from the problems of the first queer characters being two demons) didn't really commit to it, and even its uncommitted portrait is explicitly positioned as for the benefit of the male gaze.

Agreed with all of this. (Can I keep your brain in a jar when you're not using it? I promise to return it whenever you need it back.)

Oh, wow. This is great! Thanks for doing this -- I don't think I've even seen half of these before.

Recs: The women of Supernatural

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