Jessica was precisely that, but she was one freaking episode.

Even then, I feel like Jessica stood for a lot more in terms of characterizing Sam, and what he wanted and where he was in his life when the series opened. We don't ever really get to know Jess as a character in her own right (although it's hard to remember that, if you read a lot of fic), but I did like that they carried the idea of her character through to S5.

Also, they kill Dean to hurt Sam and kill Sam to hurt Dean, so it's not like it's an alien gender-related premise.

I think Jess was a well-done character who indicated where Sam was at the time of the pilot, and whose demise gave plausible fodder for him leaving that place. She wasn't a cardboard cutout position holder, she was an episode's worth of awesomeness.

And Mary far transcends a fridging.

I too want more rocking female characters around regularly on TV. But I really really hate when people ignore that the SPN crew has written (and then offed) self-realised independently-motivated women. They totally totally have. Vampire Diaries gets more cred than I'd ever expect for its female characters, and passes the Bechdel test regularly, but I'd not spend ten minutes of my real life with pretty much any of those women. Whereas I'd love to be Ellen or Mary's best friend, or go toe to toe with Ruby or Meg.

Also, they kill Dean to hurt Sam and kill Sam to hurt Dean, so it's not like it's an alien gender-related premise.

Also, in Season 1, the people Meg killed to hurt John? Caleb and Pastor Jim. Both guys.

I wonder if anyone's done an accurate running body count, by gender. Of everyone killed on the show, not just principals.

My gut feeling would be that the opening teaser monster chow is heavily weighted to hot young women in peril, but I don't think that holds true through the show as a whole. Monsters-of-the-week and non-recurring demonic goons tend to be male, and they get Columbian necklaces as a parting gift all the time too.

That was so very Sam/Dean, the constant intimate touching (nuzzling Sam's neck?!) and the narrator going on about how blind they must be. Amy's so sweet.

It's hard to judge! If there's no actual sex, I don't know how other people will read it!

I do love Ruthie, either way. I usually love paxlux's stuff, and I like that she experiments with style, too (and it usually pays off).

It was a really good story, and I'm not usually a fan of whatever that narrative style is called.

And while I don't think that anything physical was actually going on between the boys (it's almost like unoshot's Aurora Borealis, where it's so delicate, that you could almost go either way with friends/lovers. And like ita said, evocative while being completely PG) it wasn't platonic brotherly emotion there.

It's second person, which can be hard to do, and not everyone likes.

She had it all sit in the lap of an OC, but it was a well-realised OC, who didn't go over the edge into too cool or too worshippy or anything. That's not easy.

I'm not sure I've read paxlux. I'm guessing she doesn't do much D/C, or I'd recognise her name more.

I actually left a comment in someone's LJ asking them to provide links in the story to the next chapter. Fuck it, man, I have to remember which chapter I just read, back out, and click into the next one? When God invented this perfectly magical thing called hypertext?

But her response was that she was too stupid to be able to do that, except for Big Bangs. When I assume her IQ changes? She gets someone else to do it? I don't know.

I don't think I'm being a technobrat, but it's not challenging to accomplish.

I'm tempted to whip out a kill scorecard for tomorrow's SPN-watching session with bon.