I'll be interested to see those links too. Yay!

These are LJ names of people who were probably (sanely, rationally) discussing episodes way back.

destina
estrella30
esorlehcar
sevenfists
mickeym
leighm
fleshflutter
astolat
kroki_refur

Keep in mind, I started following most of these people because of fic, but I know I've seen show discussion as well.

Let me start out by saying that destina gets major points for her LJ header...

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll go poking.

Wow. You miss stuff when you just read through your friends list. That is an *excellent* header. Those muscles in his back, right to the side of his shoulder blades? ROWR.

I wish I could find those pictures without watermarks. I'm not sure I've seen him look hotter.

Jesus.

You and me both. And brenda, too!

okay, my LJ-fu is not up to snuff, link to this hot and bothersome header?

We're talking about the pictures in ita's link, above, which includes the one used in the header.

I found this meta on LJ and highly recommend it: What Happened to Sam Winchester?. (Although from the title you might expect it to maybe just be a Go Team Sam!! diatribe, it's a clearly thought out exploration of the lack of Sam's character development and the problems with Supernatural's narrative structure as a whole.) I found the meta and the comments worth the time it took to read them. There were only a few Team!Sam and OMG Jared Padalecki is just the bestest actor in the entire world!1! posts -- most are well reasoned.

I have been growing more and more disenchanted with Show, even unto the levels of Seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy, and the meta's author describes many of the reasons why. The characters have been mutated beyond what I had hoped to follow, and I have lost all hope that Sam will ever be allowed to regain anything of his earlier glimmers of interest. The writers had shiny new toys they wanted to play with, and it was certainly their prerogative to do so, but they did so at the expense of Sam and the older storylines.

What makes me want to weep most of all is the wasted potential. Just one example of a lost opportunity: what happened to Sam those two days when he died? Was he, like Buffy, finally safe and warm and away from all the fighting, finally allowed to rest? (unlikely as that may be). Or was he more likely in hell? If so, what happened to him there? Azazel had been grooming him to lead his armies. Demons had already been deciding who would and would not follow him. The Seven Deadly Sins recognized him, as did War -- don't you think once he arrived in hell the denizens (pro and anti-Azazel) would have leapt at the chance to get their hands on him? (Before people start pointing out that Sam's length of time being dead isn't close to the same as Dean's, I realize that, I'm not saying that it is. (Of course, that all presupposes that time progresses in a linear fashion in hell anyway.)) We don't know. The writers didn't care enough about Sam to tell us. And if he had gone to hell, it would have taken maybe one line to tell us. That roadside scene when Dean was telling Sam that he did remember but didn't want to talk about hell because “What I saw…there aren’t words ... There’s no making it better.” What if Sam had just quietly said "I remember" in an understanding voice? Fade to black. How awesome would that have been?

And I know this means I'm missing the show that only ever existed in my head rather than the Show that's been airing on the TV. But I've been turning more and more to fanfic trying to regain my love for the characters because I'm not feeling it from the Show and I've lost my faith that the Show actually cares about the characters. And it hurts.

And I will stop whining now and return you to your regularly scheduled Friday night.