#and part of that is just that supernatural cant write women characters to save its life which we all know but it's still egregious

[star-that-howls]

supernatural season 6 is crazy because, well, for one, it is bad, like it has such lower stakes than season 5 for obvious reasons and it's a blatant step down. then like on top of that cas is barely in the season and it's like wow angel civil war sounds Super interesting but we just don't get to see any of it aside from 2 or 3 fights throughout the season. the other reason it's crazy is because when Cas Is there, which again, very rare, the destiel bullshit is so concentrated it makes you want to beat someone over the head with a wrench.

[samanthasroberts]

Bruce Campbell on the Tragedy of Ash vs Evil Dead: Were Not Star Wars

All he ever wanted was a trip to Jacksonville—until evil came along and ruined his life. Star Bruce Campbell reflects on Season One and his doomed, ’Shakespearean’ hero.

Ash is saving a lot of people, but hes also got a lot of people killed too.

When the gleefully gory first season of Starz horror comedy Ash vs Evil Dead wraps up Saturday, its bumbling hero will have doomed the world to hell for a chance to visit the vacation spot of his dreams: Jacksonville, Florida.

And to hear showrunner Craig DiGregorio tell it, Bruce Campbell will have barely survived the ordeal.

We definitely, like, choked Bruce on liquid. He got waterboarded, but with blood, DiGregorio recalls. Then there was another instance where he kind of went blind for a while because its so viscous and sticky. It got in his eyes and he couldnt get it out.

Campbell sums up 10 episodes worth of guns, guts, and Deadite dismemberments with Ash-approved simplicity: People wanted blood, man, and they got it. 

For more than two decades, of course, what the people really wanted was more Ash. More buffoonery, more of his undeniable heroism, more smirking, brash badassery. And, man, they got it.

Twenty-three years after Army of Darkness, the last in Sam Raimis beloved Evil Dead trilogy, Ash vs Evil Dead brought Campbell back to his most iconic role, picking up with the chainsaw-handed hero well into middle age. The man who saved the world, we learn, has spent his peaceful days in blissful mediocrity, living in trailer parks, picking up women, guzzling beer, and working at a local electronics store. 

The fan-proclaimed king of postmodern cool might have petered out the rest of his life in weed smoke-filled squalor had he not accidentally unleashed evil into the world (again) by reading from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, the Book of the Dead, while high and trying to impress a girl.

Ten episodes and untold barrels of blood later, not much about Ash has changed. He falls in sort-of-love with a cop, but the romance comes to an abrupt, bloody end. He becomes vaguely attached to his two sidekicks, Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo), but their arcs end with them aghast at their friend, who just willingly traded the fate of the world for a chance to skip town with them in his Delta 88. 

Ash may be too foolish to ever grow up, but for DiGregorio and many of Ashs fans, thats part of his appeal.

The finale episodes, to me, show that this guy has grown maybe 2 percent, which is all you can hope for in a character like this, DiGregorio says. You dont want huge character shifts. It would feel disingenuous if he left the season having learned everything. 

This is all to say that Ashs life, on paper, is desperately sad.

Hes a very tragic figure. Hes Shakespearean! Campbell says. Hes a little Joseph Campbell, too. Hes on a heros journey, a bumpy road.

Campbell, whos known for assuming a kind of hybrid persona when talking Evil Deadhalf-Bruce, half-Ashstarts channeling Ashs half-baked wisdom: Cause if youre a lazy bastard, you dont have to go the hero route. You can just sit in your trailer, drink beer, and watch softcore porn and your life is over, he says, authoritatively. But if youre the hero, you gotta step out and make decisions, and some of them are gonna be really bad. People are gonna croak. Ash is saving a lot of people, but hes also got a lot of people killed, too.

That the beer-bellied Ash is so unlike most of pop cultures hyper-competent heroes, Campbell says, is what keeps luring him back to Evil Dead. Hes so flawed. First scene [of the series] that Sam [Raimi] writes for Ash, hes putting on a man-girdle. To me, thats just so awesome, he says. Other directors, theyd be too afraid. Oh, no, we cant do that. That would just be unflattering. 

Im like, Hell, yeah, it is! Ash has dentures, for gods sake! (And a bad knee and a bum shoulder.)

In the season finale, Ash returns to that old cabin in the woods for a supernatural showdown with Lucy Lawlesss Ruby, who reveals herself to be the original author of the Necronomicon. Campbell says the cabins interior set, faithfully re-created room-by-room from Raimis 1981 original, blew him away.

It gave me hives. It made the hair on the back of my head stand up, Campbell says. They got the cabin so right. I could literally walk from room to room and look through a doorway, and through every door was the right perspective down the hallway. Every window you looked through, you saw the correct door the other way.

They had the tape recorder, they had the laughing lamp, they matched the doilies and the tables. He pauses. It was justflawless. So, really disturbing.

The real-life Tennessee cabin that Raimi, his brother Ivan, and producer Rob Tappert (a college buddy of Ivans, and Lawlesss future husband) once scouted for Evil Dead, meanwhile, has long since burned down; only a chimney survives. The topic prompts Campbell into another fit of Ash-isms.

Minus Ashs gruff posturing, one could almost infer a tenderness in Campbells voice for those peoplethe Evil Dead devoteeshe keeps talking about. When asked what reservations he had about stepping into Ashs shoes again, Campbell replies promptly, Just letting fans down, thats the only thing I ever worried about. He betrays his affection when talking about the tattoos that Evil Dead fans send him, too. (He has over 300 saved in his collection.) 

A determination not to let fans down also seems to have motivated Campbells one mandate on set, his bold statement as the custodian of Ashs unique legacy: Im not saying anything that I dont want Ash to say. Its just that simple, he says. And he better not sound like everybody else. Ash has to be an amalgam, he has to be a throwback. Hes a Luddite. But hes an idiot savant. Hes actually a way more complex character than I think most people think.

DiGregorio promises that Ash vs Evil Deads second seasonpremiere date TBAwill divulge more about Ash and his backstory, beyond what little weve learned through his acid trip and three movies.

But Campbell gets to the heart of why fans really keep returning, decade after decade, to Ash and his battle against the undead.

[Evil Dead] was the little movie that could. Were not Star Warswe never were. Nobody was famous in the movie and nobodys really famous today, Campbell says, breaking into self-deprecating laughter. They did their own thing and I think people can relate to that.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/bruce-campbell-on-the-tragedy-of-ash-vs-evil-dead-were-not-star-wars/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/05/17/bruce-campbell-on-the-tragedy-of-ash-vs-evil-dead-were-not-star-wars/

[missjackil]

Glad I Came When I Did...

I came to Tumblr in July of last year, I had only been watching SPN since the March before, but I had watched everything from the beginning and was all caught up, and well into my rewatches when I got here, and I am so thankful that was the case. When I got here, and saw what many of you say about the show, characters, writers and show runners, I wondered what show you all are watching.  For one thing, the show wasnt “better” in the Kripke era, it was just different for the first 3 seasons, but that was just laying the foundation for what the show was building up to. Sure, it was nice to have just Sam and Dean in every episode and not muddied down with side characters, but this show literally being an epic, needed to get bigger. It wouldnt have lasted 13 years and counting,if it just stayed Sam and Dean hunting shifters and vampires. Season 4 changed everything, and keep in mind this was Kripke, not Gamble or Carver, we got Cas and other angels, it got darker and more personal when Dean went to Hell and was tortured and ended up breaking the first seal, and Sam was drinking demon blood and became addicted, and ultimately raising Lucifer, we learned that that the brothers were part of a big Heavenly plan, and even had Gospels written about them. The great battle of Armageddon would be fought by them! Had the story not exploded like that, the show never would have gotten a 6th season. So many of you just said “It never should have gotten a 6th season anyway” but youd sit there and whine for the next 2 years about how badly it ended. Sam sacrifces himself to save the world and ends up alone in the dark? Dean ends up with a chick he hardly knows? How does this make a good ending to such a great story?  Next, Dean is not an abusive masogynist, and Sam is not the pseudo-female that bends to Dean’s every whim. I’ll agree that Dean hit Sam too much in the early seasons (remember? back with it was “so much better”?) but Sam is a big guy and it was always a fair fight whenever he faught back, he just chose not to fight sometimes. Not because he’s afraid of Dean, but because its Sam’s nature to just not want to fight, Those of you who treat Sam like a battered wife from the 50s, or Stockholm syndrom gone wild, are just really projecting your political agenda on a show that wishes to not take part in ANY political agenda.  Sam and Dean fight. In any drama with brothers, they fight. Since early S7, Dean hasnt hit Sam without being under a supernatural influence, and no one seems to want to accept that that part of Dean has changed. Why? Because youre putting Sam in the battered wife position, where you would tell a battered wife, that the abusive husband wont ever change. Not where he SHOULD be, as a big, strong man, fully capable of kicking Dean’s ass if he wants to, but he doesnt because he loves Dean, and knows Dean loves him, even if he hasnt always known the right way to show it. 

On that same topic, Sam is not the female architype of this story, though sometimes a male/female formula is used. Normally however, Sam and Dean are Butch and Sundance or Luke Skywalker and Han Solo the way Kripke created these characters. Sam has feminine qualities, and so does Dean, but all men do, and all women have some masculine qualities.... thats just being realitic. I am just as tired of hearing about Dean’s “Toxic masculity” as I am about hearing that Sam is a woman with a penis... well, we’ve never been shown he has one, so a woman with facial hair? I dont know.... but feminize either of them in your fan fic if thats what youre into, but don’t write it into the show, when that’s not what the show is telling us.  Neither Sam nor Dean are bisexual, and I dont care if Sam has never said he’s straight, or if he sumonned a male crossroads demon, or Dean and Cas breathed the same air, or Dean made a mix tape. After 12 yrs, if neither of these boys have canonically dated a man, we can safely assume they never will. Even if Wincest was canon, it wouldnt mean they have any interest in men aside from each other.  Sam gets blamed for a lot, he does, but not everything all the time and Dean never blamed Sam for anything (after S4) that he didnt blame himself for too. in S5 Fallen Idols, Dean reminds Sam that he broke the first seal, and tells Sam he couldnt have known killing Lilith was a bad thing, In S8 when Dean tells Sam what things he could confess, he isnt throwing blame on him, but acknowledging that these werent good things, and may need confessing.... ignorance is no excuse for the law right? And Dean puts blame on them both for releasing the Darkness. In my time of watching this show, free from Tumblr, never once did Sam come off as stupid, evil, or less important than Dean. Either in the show or where the writing was concerned.  Dean may asstert himself as the boss or the leader, and most of the time, he is the leader, and thats alright, theyre a team, it doesnt minimize Sam at all, he has said basically he prefers to follow because it’s easier than leading, but he certainly can lead when necessary. Dean is the infantry and Sam is the tank. Thats not making one greater than the other, thats stratagy. But as far as being Sam’s boss, look again.... Dean barks orders at Sam sometimes, but Sam gives orders subtly, he tells Dean to stop, he stops, he gives him a bitch face, he stops, he puts his hand out, Dean doesnt get cake, he says “dont kill him” Dean doesnt kill him, Sam flashes puppydog eyes and gets basically whatever he wants. Sometimes Dean defies Sam, and sometimes Sam defies Dean... see that? The narative does not favor Dean over Sam. Again, I state that Sam has never looked weak or stupid or habitually wrong in my time of watching. A few times Dean says “Im always right” but that doesnt mean he is written to be always right. Its just a Dean thing. Dean is not the “fav” of the writers because he has more speaking lines either. Sam is a quiet character, and since Jared isnt comfortable with long monologues, that works out pretty good. Sam has more personafications than Dean, more pain and affliciton... this isnt “HEY WE HATE SAM SO LETS MAKE HIM SUFFER!! HAHAHAHA!!” This is showcasing how well Jared acts pain, or takes on a different personality. This doesnt put Dean/Jensen down, his strong points are comedic parts, making long dialogue not sound boring, and showing full emotion while still being able to speak clearly. Put these exceptional talents together and it makes for 2 awesome main characters that are defined individuals and not mirrors of each other, and yet they stay similar enough to be believable brothers, best friends, and soulmates. I dont begrudge anyones opinion on anything It’s yours, you have it, and I respect it, but it appears that a lot of you are wasting your time on a show you hate, that goes against everything you stand for, and treats your favorite actor/character like a meaningless extra, and sadly, some are following you and theyre not having their own experience, they’re living yours. I cant tell you how often I hear someone hasnt watched a certain episode, or a certain season because Tumblr people hated it, so they thought it not worth it. and I have to explain that Tumblr people hate everything, and mostly wont ever be happy with the show unless whatever ship they ship becomes canon, which none of them will. So may I suggest, lighten up. take the show at face value, dont sit there, arms crossed, phone in hand waiting to meta on something you want to be there that isnt, and just laugh and love and cry with the rest of us :)

[allofbeercom]

Bruce Campbell on the Tragedy of Ash vs Evil Dead: Were Not Star Wars

All he ever wanted was a trip to Jacksonville—until evil came along and ruined his life. Star Bruce Campbell reflects on Season One and his doomed, ’Shakespearean’ hero.

Ash is saving a lot of people, but hes also got a lot of people killed too.

When the gleefully gory first season of Starz horror comedy Ash vs Evil Dead wraps up Saturday, its bumbling hero will have doomed the world to hell for a chance to visit the vacation spot of his dreams: Jacksonville, Florida.

And to hear showrunner Craig DiGregorio tell it, Bruce Campbell will have barely survived the ordeal.

We definitely, like, choked Bruce on liquid. He got waterboarded, but with blood, DiGregorio recalls. Then there was another instance where he kind of went blind for a while because its so viscous and sticky. It got in his eyes and he couldnt get it out.

Campbell sums up 10 episodes worth of guns, guts, and Deadite dismemberments with Ash-approved simplicity: People wanted blood, man, and they got it. 

For more than two decades, of course, what the people really wanted was more Ash. More buffoonery, more of his undeniable heroism, more smirking, brash badassery. And, man, they got it.

Twenty-three years after Army of Darkness, the last in Sam Raimis beloved Evil Dead trilogy, Ash vs Evil Dead brought Campbell back to his most iconic role, picking up with the chainsaw-handed hero well into middle age. The man who saved the world, we learn, has spent his peaceful days in blissful mediocrity, living in trailer parks, picking up women, guzzling beer, and working at a local electronics store. 

The fan-proclaimed king of postmodern cool might have petered out the rest of his life in weed smoke-filled squalor had he not accidentally unleashed evil into the world (again) by reading from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, the Book of the Dead, while high and trying to impress a girl.

Ten episodes and untold barrels of blood later, not much about Ash has changed. He falls in sort-of-love with a cop, but the romance comes to an abrupt, bloody end. He becomes vaguely attached to his two sidekicks, Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo), but their arcs end with them aghast at their friend, who just willingly traded the fate of the world for a chance to skip town with them in his Delta 88. 

Ash may be too foolish to ever grow up, but for DiGregorio and many of Ashs fans, thats part of his appeal.

The finale episodes, to me, show that this guy has grown maybe 2 percent, which is all you can hope for in a character like this, DiGregorio says. You dont want huge character shifts. It would feel disingenuous if he left the season having learned everything. 

This is all to say that Ashs life, on paper, is desperately sad.

Hes a very tragic figure. Hes Shakespearean! Campbell says. Hes a little Joseph Campbell, too. Hes on a heros journey, a bumpy road.

Campbell, whos known for assuming a kind of hybrid persona when talking Evil Deadhalf-Bruce, half-Ashstarts channeling Ashs half-baked wisdom: Cause if youre a lazy bastard, you dont have to go the hero route. You can just sit in your trailer, drink beer, and watch softcore porn and your life is over, he says, authoritatively. But if youre the hero, you gotta step out and make decisions, and some of them are gonna be really bad. People are gonna croak. Ash is saving a lot of people, but hes also got a lot of people killed, too.

That the beer-bellied Ash is so unlike most of pop cultures hyper-competent heroes, Campbell says, is what keeps luring him back to Evil Dead. Hes so flawed. First scene [of the series] that Sam [Raimi] writes for Ash, hes putting on a man-girdle. To me, thats just so awesome, he says. Other directors, theyd be too afraid. Oh, no, we cant do that. That would just be unflattering. 

Im like, Hell, yeah, it is! Ash has dentures, for gods sake! (And a bad knee and a bum shoulder.)

In the season finale, Ash returns to that old cabin in the woods for a supernatural showdown with Lucy Lawlesss Ruby, who reveals herself to be the original author of the Necronomicon. Campbell says the cabins interior set, faithfully re-created room-by-room from Raimis 1981 original, blew him away.

It gave me hives. It made the hair on the back of my head stand up, Campbell says. They got the cabin so right. I could literally walk from room to room and look through a doorway, and through every door was the right perspective down the hallway. Every window you looked through, you saw the correct door the other way.

They had the tape recorder, they had the laughing lamp, they matched the doilies and the tables. He pauses. It was justflawless. So, really disturbing.

The real-life Tennessee cabin that Raimi, his brother Ivan, and producer Rob Tappert (a college buddy of Ivans, and Lawlesss future husband) once scouted for Evil Dead, meanwhile, has long since burned down; only a chimney survives. The topic prompts Campbell into another fit of Ash-isms.

Minus Ashs gruff posturing, one could almost infer a tenderness in Campbells voice for those peoplethe Evil Dead devoteeshe keeps talking about. When asked what reservations he had about stepping into Ashs shoes again, Campbell replies promptly, Just letting fans down, thats the only thing I ever worried about. He betrays his affection when talking about the tattoos that Evil Dead fans send him, too. (He has over 300 saved in his collection.) 

A determination not to let fans down also seems to have motivated Campbells one mandate on set, his bold statement as the custodian of Ashs unique legacy: Im not saying anything that I dont want Ash to say. Its just that simple, he says. And he better not sound like everybody else. Ash has to be an amalgam, he has to be a throwback. Hes a Luddite. But hes an idiot savant. Hes actually a way more complex character than I think most people think.

DiGregorio promises that Ash vs Evil Deads second seasonpremiere date TBAwill divulge more about Ash and his backstory, beyond what little weve learned through his acid trip and three movies.

But Campbell gets to the heart of why fans really keep returning, decade after decade, to Ash and his battle against the undead.

[Evil Dead] was the little movie that could. Were not Star Warswe never were. Nobody was famous in the movie and nobodys really famous today, Campbell says, breaking into self-deprecating laughter. They did their own thing and I think people can relate to that.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/bruce-campbell-on-the-tragedy-of-ash-vs-evil-dead-were-not-star-wars/