hunenka:

majestysnowbird:

majestysnowbird:

supernatural seasons 1-5 are good for the same reason hamlet and beowulf are good. no i will not elaborate

it’s the worldbuilding which leaves so much in the shadows and makes the mythologies of these stories wildly evocative and rich and limitlessly deep and subject to endless spinning

Very true. *nostalgic sigh*

Though I wonder—and I apologize for going a bit off-topic—if it is even possible to keep a story at this level of mystery, tension, things left unsaid and the feeling of a vast, unknown world beyond what we know when it goes on for as long as SPN has? Not saying SPN couldn’t have handled the worldbuilding much better in the later seasons, but any fictional world is bound to get smaller, less mysterious and scary as time goes by.

(At least in my experience; the same has happened in the Stargate universe, the Buffyverse, on Game of Thrones… If anyone out there knows of a story that managed to keep the level of tension and mystery of its fictional world at the same level throughout its entire long run, I’d love to know!)

I’d say that the quality Hamlet and SPN (apologies to all Beowulf fans, I just don’t find it appealing in the slightest) share is the blend of the personal and the mythical - that we can relate to the characters and their relationships on an intimate level while at the same time experiencing them as something alien, out of this world. As well as the combination of minimalism and endlessness. Hamlet doesn’t exactly have a small cast, but it can be reduced to a few key players - and yet the impact the actions of these players have suggests a vast, complex reality beyond them.

The SPN cast has grown a lot over the years - and the focus has moved away from the main characters more and more. This was a direct result of first Jared and then also Jensen wanting to film less. During the first seasons of SPN we had no idea what was going on in the demon sphere, for example. These days we get to see everything that happens in heaven and hell. Imagine a version of Hamlet where we get to see everything that happens in Norway and in Poland instead of Hamlet’s soliloquies. It might give us a deeper understanding of the political dynamics between the involved countries, but it would lack so much of what makes Hamlet Hamlet.

I think this shift of perspective is the primary reason for SPN’s loss of mystery. Another is the dynamic aspect of the narrative. Most narratives these days are dynamic, but it hasn’t always been that way. Your question, @hunenka, made me think of children’s book verses by Enid Blython and Astrid Lindgren - those series manage to retain their inherent charm throughout five, ten or twenty books, but what makes that possible is the static character of those narratives. They exist outside of space and time. We never witness those children grow up. We never really experience character growth over the course of several books. And the magical worlds those children live in are never questioned, never de-mystified.