Supernatural 519

[katikat]

Loved the episode, the fact that it moved the mythology a step further again!

In bullet points this time! :)

* Kali was awesome!
* I liked the American Gods take on the whole thing.
* I'm sorry that Gabriel died :( But it's awesome that it was he who provided them with a solution and who stood up for the humans, against Michael and Lucifer both. That rocked!
* I loved that Gabriel's message was embedded in porn, ha!
* I think that Lucifer was able to kill the other Gods so easily because he's a part of a stronger religion - I think that with Gods, the more people believe in you, the stronger you are...
* Sam and Dean were awesome. I loved how Sam bitched about them stopping at the hotel and I loved how scared Dean was but that he still came up with a plan. You're awesome, Dean!
* I loved what Kali said about the Christians - their God is not the only God out there and sometimes, they forget about that. And yes, I'm a Christian but I'm not blind to the flaws of my own religion.
* Pestilence was EWW! Just EWW! I mean, it's Pestilence, of course he'll be disgusting, but EWW!

Promo for 5x20!

And another O' Death promo, recap of the season so far plus new scenes from upcoming episodes! So, spoilery, beware. Awesome!

Comments

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

you know, this bothered me about it
I'm pretty sure in numbers alone that Kali would have had the most worshippers, I mean she appears in several religions and they outnumber christians loads to one
so therefore surely Kali, who has like several cities named after her and things like that, would be more powerful than lucifer, just saying

[katikat.livejournal.com]

Not true. According to data, Christians number 2.2 billions, 1/4 to 1/3 world population, and Christianity is the largest religion on Earth. Kali is Hindu, which has 1 billion adherents - barely a half. Lucifer was the strongest one there.

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

but does that count agnosticism, atheism and general apathy
i mean lets face it christians aren't a particularly devout bunch at the best of times
i just think it strange, i mean i understand that baldr and odin were just fingerpuppets by that point (and probably only in it because of american gods) but....
i do think there might have been a touch of western arrogance in it

edit
also lets not forget the christian habit of absorption whereby gods were redesigned as saints, so at least some of the gods would have been altered by that
I just think that spn can sometimes be very closeminded to alternate options, such as other religions, it is very judeo christian in it's outlookand it's not unheard of for it to change things to fit it's plot line and that it took one of the most powerful goddesses about and made her the bitch of a nongod creature bugged me,

[katikat.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but it doesn't change the fact that officially, over 2 bil. people claim to be Christians which means that they believe in some form of Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil. They don't have to be devout. I mean, I bet that not all Hindu pray to their Gods either, so it ballances the fact. As Kali said - they were there first, but Christianity basically steamrolled them. But that doesn't make the Christian God any more or less real than Odin or Ganesh.

ETA: And about SPN being Judeo Christian - it does take place in a country where most people are Christian and most legends are therefor Christian. And if these Gods worked together, they could have probably taken Lucifer down. But they just lack the ability to cooperate, just like the Christian angels. It's not just Christians hating everybody. Other religions dislike other religions too.

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that
it's just one of those things, yanno, first of all Kali and Ganesh were the only religions represented that weren't killed off by time (and christian burnings) there have been gods before, but they were always like tree spirits
i think it was offensive in that heavy handed joy that is spn,

I'm watching SG1 and finding the difference, sure gods are evil aliens in this but they are powerful and dangerous and in spn they were just meh

and why were they fed human beings? i can see kali being down with that, but I'm pretty sure Ganesh is vegetarian, that Odin and Baldr would have preferred a hog roast and a few others
i'm not sure about the chinese fellow to be honest
but i don't remember any of them - except kali - being into human sacrifice so....

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I didn't see anything offensive or heavy-handed in it. At no point in this episode SPN claimed that the Christian God is better. Kali even said it openly, that Christians think that they are the end all and be all of religion and that they are used to stomp on everything. I think it was a very neat form of criticism towards Christianity in general.

As for human sacrifices, every God, Odin included, had humans sacrificed to them, even if only in the beginning. Sacrifices to Odin were recorded even in the 11th century in Germany. Slavic people sacrificed humans to their pagain Gods til the 10th century... Not to mention the Greek or Roman Gods!

So yeah, I didn't see anything offending in it at all. As I said, fewer adherents = lesser power, IMHO.

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

the fewer adherents = lesser power thing i'm not arguing

but lets remember that angels aren't gods, they're supernatural beings, and sure they're powerful but not gods

this is meant to be american gods, i know that, and those gods were the incarnations of the gods brought across with the immigrants
if those were those gods it might make more sense but

weren't odin's sacrifices tied to a tree and left there?
i liked the ep, but it just smacked me as being not quite right yanno

[twilight-angel.livejournal.com]

So much love for this ep! (Er...again. I'm really loving this season lately.) I'm a sucker for any kind of American Gods-esque storylines. (I can't even tell you how many times I've read American Gods. Neil Gaiman FTW.) What's been in my own personal head-canon since, oh, season one or so, has been that this (http://lyra-wing.livejournal.com/100679.html) is the future of the Winchester brothers. So, you can see why I liked this ep so much. I'm really hoping that the Pagan gods show up again (you know, those that weren't invited and therefore actually survived along with Kali).

Oh, Gabriel/Trickster/Loki. I was really hoping that he'd fight in the last battle (if there was to be a last battle) on the humans' side, but he was awesome here, too. (Plus, of course it was a porn, and of course Dean [A] knew of it and [b] really liked that one. How much porn does that boy watch?!) I always liked the Trickster's episodes quite a bit. He will be missed. :(

Ew, Pestilence/Plague. So. Gross. (But hey! It's Matt Frewer! ..it is Matt Frewer, right? I can't confirm with IMDB.) And Death from the promo! He looks awesome! ...also familiar. Do you know who that is?

And now I'm really crazy curious as to where Castiel's gone off.

[katikat.livejournal.com]

Yup, it was Matt Frewer. And I know that guy playing Death - I loved the Buh Bye on his car, ha! - he played a cleaner/assassin on some show...

ETA: I've read American Gods but I must admit it didn't make much sense to me. I skipped all the tiny chapters introducing the various Gods, I was interested in Shadow - was that his name? - only.

[twilight-angel.livejournal.com]

The license plate was made of awesome. Speaking of, didn't Pestilence have a vanity plate, too? I don't remember.

Man, Death's actor is going to bug the bejeezus out of me until I figure out how I know him. (Do you know how hard it is to Google an actor when he's playing a character with a name like Death?!)

I loved American Gods, everything from the characters (yes, Shadow) to the gods' intros to the very concepts. But yeah, Shadow definitely tied it all together perfectly.

...man. Now I want to reread American Gods again. Crap. :p

[layne67.livejournal.com]

I probably would have been offended if I were of one of those religions there but since I'm not and anyway, I've learnt a long time ago not to think of SPN in terms of religion, so yeah, that episode rocked for me!

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I'm not a religious person so I don't care when someone insults Christianity. I am Christian but I live in a country where 75% of people are atheists, so I'm used to having a very private relationship with God and whatever anyone says, it can't insult my faith. I never understand why people overreact so much to the religious themes in SPN. Every time, I'm all "So?" O.o