Quick question: Does anyone have any thoughts (or any links to good meta posts) regarding the Trickster? I'm trying to figure out if he maps well onto a specific trickster figure (Coyote, Loki) or if he's just a mish-mash.

So far, I'm finding that he's a bit of a combo plate of certain tricksterish attributes.

Yeah, I think that's probably true. I was going through the Devil's Road Map featurette on the DVDs, which is AWESOME because it looks like they explain the lore and research behind every single episode. And they talk about how the Trickster figures into many different stories and mythologies, so I don't think they mapped him to one specific character. Just the general characteristics and whatever works for the story.

Trickster on SPN is not very Coyote. I did a bunch of Coyote research before writing a story where he appears, although most of my research was limited to California Mission Indian tales. In those stories, Coyote is a creator figure, very self-involved, varies from pretty sneaky to unbelievably stupid, and spends most of his time trying to get sex. And find food.

I don't see much overlap between Trickster on SPN, who really does have something of a moral code, even if the implementation is cruel, and the anarchic creative figure of (some) Native American legends.

Is it wrong of me to be so pleased that Supernatural was #2 AND #4 in the ratings for the CW?

Javier bardem & JDM separated at birth? (Scroll down for the picture.)

EVERYONE is saying that, it's so hysterical. Is there a market for movie with a character and his mysteriously-more-Spanish brother?

They could drive around the country in a cool muscle car hunting demons. . .

Holy cow, that's really compelling evidence, I must say. I think the dimples really do it.

You think that's freaky? Observe the family resemblance!

Oh yeah, that's kind of freaky. Someone had stills of JDM from a movie very early in his career in his early twenties, full-length shots. He had the same rail-thin, miles-long legs and torso and broad shoulders build as Padalecki, and a similar jut of jaw and glower from beneath the brows.

And then I've seen laughing shots of Samantha Smith with the same big eyes, full lips, eye crinkles and jaw shape as Ackles. Casting people can be scary accurate sometimes.

And I've always thought this pic (click for larger version) is a really good match to that one of JDM.

I have thoughts about the episode order, but I'm going to have to come back to them

But you never did!

I read in someone else's LJ today that, although the ep order was shuffled due to the strike, the writers are leaving the airing order as canon. Which will change some things, as Sam's hesitation and giving real thought to sacrificing the virgin, can be attributed now to how his long hunt without Dean changed and hardened him.

It gives the writers a shortcut they would not have taken, with more episodes to illustrate Sam's fall, or his change, whatever it turns out to be. I think I'd rather see the process go into S4, and show the process, one step after another, give us a chance to absorb and observe, rather than ringing some fast changes on us. I feel a little shortchanged, both in story and in seeing how JP would have handled Sam's slow slide into...ambiguity, if not outright evil.