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From the LiveJournal of prentice_molly, July 2009
Carver Edlund is American: How TV Influences Supernatural
Be warned: I am going to spoil everything! Everything! Stuff after No Rest, even!
That being said, welcome to my latest nerd-fest. You can tell it’s a nerd-fest because not only do I have a theory (it could be bunnies, oh wait wrong fandom), I came up with a pretentious name for it. I’m calling it the Seasonal Arc Theory of SPN.
What it boils down to is that the books we have fall pretty neatly into three arcs, all roughly the same length. Things are confused a little because of the fill-in books that were published out of their “proper” internal chronological order—if you’re not up on that, see the Grand Unified Timeline Post. (In fact, open that in a second window anyway because book numbers will reflect the system used in that post.) But once you’ve got all the books in the right order, it’s very clear what’s going on.
Arc #1: Dude, Where’s My Dad?
This arc runs from #1/1, Supernatural, to #29/23 In My Time of Dying. It’s what a lot of people think of as “classic” SPN; when someone refers to “good old-fashioned casefic”, what they mean is that it reads like it’s from the first arc. There’s the prequel with Mary, the burning house, etc, and then we jump to Sam finding his brother in his off-campus apartment on Halloween night; they go to Jericho looking for their father, and deal with the Woman in White. They come back, Jess gets fridged (must…not…rant…), and they’re off. They have work to do.
They spend the arc travelling to interesting cases, meeting nifty monsters and killing them, sometimes at the behest of the absent John. We spend a lot of time in Sam’s head, not so much in Dean’s. Sam rants about his father’s controlling ways a lot. Dean tries to follow orders but is quite clearly desperate to see John again. Sam is nerdy; Dean is hedonistic. We the readers get occasional glimpses of John that the boys are not privy to, though we never get inside John’s head. Just in case you were wondering, you’ll never see Missouri again, which is sad.
This arc ends when the boys exorcise Meg, rescue John, get taunted by Yellow-Eyes, and are hit by a semi (at the end of a book, damn you Edlund!). The Impala’s trashed, everyone’s in the hospital; Dean is apparently brain-dead but John trades away the Colt and his own soul to save his son.
This arc was the most complete in terms of being published in the correct order; only 7 of the 23 books were fill-ins.
Arc #2: Save Sam or Kill Him
The first book in the second arc is the stupidly late (but palindromic) #42/24, Everybody Loves a Clown. In this arc we get to see a lot more of how the boys are more complex than we thought—Dean isn’t just a simple guy who likes beer, chicks and rock ‘n roll, and Sam has some…let’s call them “anger management issues”. Dean deals badly with John’s death; Sam isn’t great either but he had college to work out how to live apart from his family. We discover that the boys, especially Dean, are on the radar of law enforcement--there's an FBI agent who thinks they're psychopaths. Sam's visions are getting worse, and we meet other people his age who have similar powers...who also lost their mothers at six months. Sam's immune to the demonic Croatoan virus. Dean's dearest wish is to have had a normal family. Sam has another love interest who gets killed, sigh. More of the scenes in this arc are from Dean's POV.
And then, in the middle of #38/39 All Hell Breaks Loose, Sam gets magically kidnapped, and dies. This sets up the entire third arc, which is why is makes no sense that it was published thirty-eighth, for heaven's sake. Because Dean goes to the crossroads and makes a deal with a demon for Sam's life. The demon only gives him one year instead of the traditional ten. Dean, Sam, Ellen and Bobby confront Yellow-Eyes in a cemetery in Wyoming, and shoot him with the Colt. John's shade escapes Hell. Everything's great! Except Dean has a deadline now.
Of this arc, only three of the books are in the correct order: #17/25 Bloodlust, #18/30 Croatoan, and #19/36 Heart. The other 14 are fill-ins, and there are a number of gaps where there could be more.
Arc #3: The Year of the Deal
Currently, the third arc starts with #48/40 The Kids Are Alright, in which we discover that Dean does not have an accidental son but would maybe kind of like to have had. (Because of later developments there has to be another story between AHBL and TKAA, but it's not out yet.) A new antangonist is introduced in the person of Bela Talbot, a supernatually-aware thief, in the hilarious #27/41 A Bad Day at Black Rock. For the first time, Sam and Dean get roughly equal POV time.
We spend the third arc with Sam getting increasingly frantic over Dean's impending doom, and Dean slowly figuring out that he doesn't want to die. There's still a fair bit of Random Casefic, but Dean's deal gets mentioned quite a bit. His deal is held by the evil Lilith, a very powerful demon with a taste for possessing little girls. To get out of it, Lilith will have to be found and killed.
They don't manage to do this. In #24/51 No Rest for the Wicked, Dean's deal comes due as the boys and Bobby try to find and kill Lilith, but she takes over the host body of Ruby, a demon who has been, for inscrutable reasons of her own, helping Sam and Dean out. The last scene of the book is of Dean, in Hell, screaming for his brother.
11 books, six of which are fill-ins, and plenty of room for more filling in the future. Clearly a lead-in to a fourth arc, with Dean getting out of Hell (Fights his own way out? Rescued by Sam? Who knows?) and the fallout from it, except the publisher went out of business and we are left with fic to keep us warm on the cold, cold nights.
But anyway, you're saying OK, Molly, what does all that actually mean?
Well, look at it. Arc #1 is the clearest example because of the number of books--an American TV season is generally in the low twenties. But all three of them do it: there's an overall plot, but not every "episode" directly addresses it; the last book of each arc is a big shock; there are cliffhangers. Even the language of the books is cinematic, when you think about it.
Carver Edlund grew up on television, just like all the rest of us, and it shows in the way he structures his stories. Heck, many of the books even have "teasers", where we see the victim du jour encounter the monster and get killed by it. And in those scenes which are not from either Sam or Dean's POV, we drop into an impersonal 3rd that doesn't have a POV character, like a TV camera.
And what does that mean?
Clearly, it means we have to decide who plays Sam and Dean in the series!
Aaaaaand....GO!