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Dammit, I had held back saying anything the other day! Now it's way past my bed time, and here I am writing up a huge post! ::shakes fist::


I always liked that Supernatural actually has some strong female antagonists, that aren't just women dressed up in black leather with their boobs popping out. Even Buffy seemed to lack a cast of female Big Bads (Drusilla is shadowed by her male peers, Darla was a device for Angel, Faith is just...complicated, and so, we're left with Glory...who was a ho).

The strong female characters we do see on the show, that aren't monster fodder, tend to dress pretty conservatively, especially compared to other shows on CW. One of these female characters is over 30, and definitely a few sizes above 0. And she never goes evil, or needs a rescuing.

I found any sexualized violence present in the show to come nowhere close to what you see in the horror genre. I can, and never will be able to stand the majority of slasher flicks for that reason.

I watched all the seasons together in a block over this past summer, and I honestly never noticed only super pretty girls were dying in the show in hyper sexualized ways until we had them all edited together. Even then, I still don't think all the deaths are presented in that manner. I also don't remember there being a "pretty girl" in every single episode, unless they just have to be skinny. A lack of people over size 0 is a fault of the entire television industry as a whole.

Episode 2- No women die, only male campers.
Episode 3- No women die, only males.
Episode 4- Entire planes of people are dying here, and a female character, the stewardess is shown as being someone capable of
independent thought to boot.
Episode 9- A single mother and her children are rescued, and I didn't find her to be a smoking hot milf. We see a ghost of their mom, who here, sacrifices herself to save her sons. If anything, the entire episode has a maternal theme.
Episode 8- No female character death.
Episode 10- No female character death. There's a female ghost, but she's as horribly disfigured as the male ghosts, and she is not one of the ghosts who is destroyed. Also, there's a girl who is shown to be noticeably smarter than her dumb boyfriend.
Episode 11- Monster kills couples, and the girl who is in trouble here has a big hand in saving herself, Dean does not ride in on a horse and just rescue her
Episode 12- The preacher's wife dies here, and was well over 40 and definitely not smoking hot or flirtacious. However, Julie Benz is, and she is neither saved(she doesn't die from a monster, but she isn't saved from her natural disease which will eventually kill her) or killed.
Episode 13- No female character death, but we get some sex. Which happens about once a season.
Episode 14- No female character death, but someone attempts matricide. The mom is not a milf.
Episode 18- No female characters die, although some of the children who are victimized by the monster are female.
Episode 21- No female characters die

Practically every episode did not kill a woman, if 9/22 episodes featured absolutely no death of a female, and that's including dispatched ghosts of female spirits.

Agree with Bart. This is not a problem with Supernatural but a problem Hollywood. Bart also did a good job showing that women did not die every episode of Season 1.



I never thought of Meg as smoking hot but that's besides the point. Two things here. One: I will once again say that Sam and Dean have saved as many men as women including each other. In fact, I'd venture to say that they have saved each other more times during the show than "hot" women in peril. Two, tired of people complaining about females being evil characters. A lot of the times they're more interesting than the evil males. I thought Drusilla was more interesting than Spike and Glory was infinitely more interesting than Adam.(Since Buffy somehow got drug into this)



You really think the point of the plot is MALE suffering?? You're really reading way too much between the lines. It's a road show with monsters. Suffering will happen...that's what monsters usually do but the suffering is spread around...ie all those pretty young women dying?

The fact of the matter is this...calling out Supernatural like this is bullshit. As much as Selina dislikes it, I'll say it again. Men and women die. They die in horrible ways equally. Men and women are saved. They are male hunters, they are female hunters. The show is about two brothers on the road killing monsters. Shoving a third character in the car for the sake of having a female hero in every episode just to have a woman would be insulting.

And one more thing...I bet I could make a nice edited video with music that proves Supernatural must hate men.

It's not a problem with Hollywood; it's a problem with us. Hollywood, the mass media, whatever you want to call it doesn't sell us things we do not want, or rather won't stop selling us something until it stops being profitable. While it's true perhaps that certain mass media outlets are governed by the urge to transmit certain sociopolitical viewpoints through their output, profit and loss statements will always override that urge or market forces sweep them out of competition. If you object to portrayals of certain things in certain ways, the only way forward is to vote with your wallet and foster awareness and discussion of the given issue. There isn't a single systemic sickness in contemporary media that got there without tacit support and none have been conquered through inaction.

Here, give me that.

*grabs laptop*

We're on freaking vacation and you're sitting here typing tl;dr about Supernatural? rolleyes

Why you guys are analyzing in depth is beyond me. If you dissect ANY show/movie, you're going to find an issue. What ever happened to just taking these shows at face value?

Spoon:
If you enjoy the show, good for you. If you don't, go watch something else

There, now we can be done!

We can't go to the beach today. It's too windy.
We've only been twice. We lost about 4 days to weather. We're supposed to go tomorrow and Friday though.

PARASAILING! I see people doing it all the time on the lake here and am sooo envious.

I don't know...call me strange, but I like Supernatural and Buffy equally.

I mean I can rip into the fact that Buffy plays up the femininest and Supernatural is all macho but to be quiet honest...i really don't give a damn.

They are both decent shows about everyones favorite kinds of boogeymen. The only thing that pushes Supernatural VERY slightly in the head was the episode that gave a nod to comic geeks and slash fiction.

That was just way to funny.

I said her status was complicated specifically because: She was being heavily manipulated by the Mayor. Secondly, I always thought the big reason why Buffy deemed Faith to be a bad person, her accidental staking of the Mayor's assistant/grunt, was heavily influenced by Buffy's opinion.
-Willow is allowed to try to destroy the world, and attempts to knowingly murder three people directly. She succeeds in one case of that. She is rehabilitated, and forgiven for what she did when she was bad.

-Angel lost his soul and murdered 2 allies, and attempted to destroy the world. Whether you consider Angel to be a different person from Angelus or not, Angel is still morally responsible for the actions of both. When he is re-ensouled, and returns in Season 3, he is rehabilitated and forgiven for what he did when he was bad.

-Anya willingly signed up to be a vengeance demon. Although Buffy does try to kill her after her fist official wish granting stint, once the consequences (and resulting death) of the wish are reversed, Anya is deemed something that no longer needs to be killed. Although there is a resulting tension of her actions here, it comes no where close to how Faith is treated.

When Angel attempts rehabilitation of Faith, Buffy is incredulous that he would even consider that an option for someone of Faith's character. This seems particularly unfair when compared with how other characters are treated.



Again, this is all specifically why I labeled her status as a "Big Bad" as being a complicated. In Supernatural the antagonists are far more simple, and easy to sort into jars of good and bad. The main characters themselves are the ones who are riffed with moral ambiguity.

...it's okay for Sam to end the life of a woman who finds out she is a werewolf, after they find her condition is "uncurable"? They couldn't just leave her with the responsibility of NOT SLEEPING DURING NIGHTTIME for three days out of every month??



I feel like Angelus' only real motive in doing anything he did was to hurt Buffy, and that his real reasons for trying to end the world was not to make Drusilla happy, but to simply meet his sadistic goals regarding Buffy. When Angelus returns later, to basically a Hell on Earth situation in LA, he finds it utterly boring and not worth his time.

When Drusilla is shown to act independently both later in Buffy and Angel, I feel she is a much stronger villian than her time with Spike, or with both Spike and Angelus.



My dislike for Glory is more with the presentation of the character than anything else, since she is essentially a spoiled princess. She sits in bubble baths and other examples of luxury, and seems to punish her minions even when they are successful in their duties.

However, I didn't like Lilith much either when she was no longer in the body of a young girl. My appreciation for the character went away when she became a skinny blond chick, who seals her deals with sex. Also, her earlier motive seemed to indicate she wanted to be the leader if Hell were to reign on Earth. I felt like this motive was severely changed later, and that all her work made her look like she was just working to serve the needs of someone else (Lucifer).




What man do you mean here? I am confused D: Joss Whedon, and an explanation for why it would be counter productive to have that type of antagonist present?

And is the earlier paragraph in regard to Twilight, the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries, back to Supernatural, or a completely different example of vampire fiction?