#and they would brawl it out in a dennys parking lot at five am

[jes12321]

Obsessed with the idea of Fushiguro Toji and Gojo Satoru getting into a custody battle for Tsumiki and Megumi aind ending up with the classic MWF with one parent, TRS with the other parent and every other Sunday. Just think it’d be silly.

[wanderingnork]

Okay, so some slightly more coherent thoughts on American Gods, now that I’ve had five seconds to breathe and collect myself. I mean, I’m still raving, but now it’s coherent raving...massive, massive spoilers under the cut, obviously.

So that opening. Hell’s bells, what an opening. SO excited to see Mr. Ibis right off the bat (will admit that I muttered “Θώθ what’s this” when I saw him). Only complaints about the bit with the Vikings: there were a frankly excessive amount of arrows and what was with that arm??? I swear if this doesn’t become the Fandom Meme I am LEAVING the fandom forever...not really, I think I believe a little too much in this show to walk away.

Let’s talk a moment about Shadow. He is amazing. I already adore him--I liked him in the book, I LOVE him now. Ricky Whittle is, I think, the reason for that: he conveys subtleties so well and is a bloody enthralling performer. I may have shed a tear or two after the warden told him about Laura. It was just tiny shifts in his expression that conveyed the cracking of a noble heart...oh, that hurt. And he just kept going from there, giving so much depth and complexity to this quiet, reserved character. We don’t have to be hearing Shadow’s internal monologue to understand the internal emotional narrative which is already picking up steam.

His meeting with Wednesday was, frankly, perfect. I was leery, at first, when I saw pictures of Wednesday: now I’m on board entirely. Maybe it’s a little bit of Wednesday’s magic (after all, that sixteenth charm of his does work wonders on women), but I do appreciate his portrayal so much. He’s the right mix of grandfatherly wisdom, conman charm, and fearsome elder god. That scene in the bar--“It’s heads”--induced shivers.

Speaking of the bar scene: THAT WAS SPECTACULAR. I know I’ve said this already but: I would legitimately fight Mad Sweeney in a Denny’s parking lot at 3 AM. For the sheer unholy fuckin’ joy of it. The juxtaposition of Shadow’s deal with Wednesday with Sweeney playing a bullseye game of darts in the background, the fight spectated by everyone in the bar while a coin spins on its edge on the table...it was surreal and beautiful and mythic. (Which: I’ll get back to that in a moment.) It was like watching a legend play out on screen: Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s wrestling match, Robin Hood and Little John fighting on the bridge, Shadow and Sweeney brawling in a bar.

I rather wish that we’d gotten to see more of that delightful leprechaun. But Shadow waking up in the backseat of a Cadillac driven by Wednesday was great. I did have a little laugh, as a Supernatural fan--the iconic American road trip these days requires sweeping panoramic shots of the landscape, two men, and a long black classic car. But it was good. The mood was good.

On the subject of moods: Bilquis. Again, 10/10 mood. There were so many ways that scene could have gone wrong, but it didn’t. It went incredibly right. I loved the subtle vulnerability, the quiet disbelief that someone actually thought she was worthy of worship, that shifted so quickly into power and deific majesty. At least that guy got a pleasant death. I hope we get to see much more of her, because I was fascinated.

Nice sign for Eagle Point. “The crossroads of America.” I see what you did there.

That scene in the graveyard just about killed me. The grief was so real and tangible that it left a taste in my mouth. That moment when the coin sank into the ground, knowing what’s coming because I read the book--my hands got cold. I look forward to Laura’s return, because I have the feeling that if it lives up to the promise of the first episode it is going to bone-chilling.

“Bone-chilling” is what I would call basically the ENTIRE ending from the moment the street lights started going out. The image of Shadow walking the lines down the middle of the dark road--there’s a moment that will stick. Thematically appropriate and visually stunning. When he walked off the road to check out the flashing object, I had to groan: for all the books he read in prison, Shadow is NOT genre-savvy. He thinks he’s in a crime thriller, when in reality...well, it’s a crime thriller, but one played by entirely different rules.

The change from the limo to the VR device was interesting. I feel like it demonstrates rather well the arrogance of the New Gods: what guarantee did they have that Shadow would actually get near the device? They relied on him to come over and poke it (which he did), but it’s an uncertain stratagem at best. The kind of stratagem that someone inexperienced would pull. Inside the VR device, expectations about that inexperienced person were met. Technical Boy was pretty much as expected: an angry teenager with framerate problems. That line about the synthetic toad skins was intriguing...a little more old magic than you thought you needed, hmmm? The goons being faceless was a nice touch.

And...jeez, we need to talk about that ending scene. I’m not sure that I’m half qualified enough to run a full analysis on that. The image of a black man being beaten and lynched by a crowd of white men is a powerful one in the American psyche, and at the moment it looms particularly large. Obviously, it’s a callback to the idea of the noose--the ritual hanging of Odin on Yggdrasil (which we’ve also seen multiple times in the episode)--but it’s also a callback to the very real nooses faced by black people in this country. I sincerely hope that, given the plot-critical nature of nooses and hangings within the story, the showrunners treat this issue with the gravity it deserves.

This meebling is already running so long, and I haven’t even managed to touch on everything. We saw the buffalo, the World Tree, our darling Low-Key Lyesmith, and probably more things I missed on first viewing. This show is already a masterpiece, as far as I’m concerned. Though it takes place in our modern world, it retains a mythic quality that shifts us just slightly to the left of reality. The hypersaturated colors, the impossible volumes of blood, the larger-than-life characters, the view of America as seen through the eyes of an epic poet...just from the first episode, it’s already the kind of show that makes you, just for a moment, stop and wonder. Is it real? Is it all true? Should you do what the gods ask you to, and believe?