Jan 24, 2024
Considering Bill Hanna's interest in Scouting, and considering further that Camp Fire Girls (now simply Camp Fire) is basically a variant of Scouting, I assume this might be apropos in its own way:
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Considering Bill Hanna's interest in Scouting, and considering further that Camp Fire Girls (now simply Camp Fire) is basically a variant of Scouting, I assume this might be apropos in its own way:
currently reading
Critically Endangered Language Introduction:
Spokane Language
Npoqínišcn
Some information about the Spokane language:
It’s critically endangered, meaning there are very few native speakers left, who are also elderly, and young people are not picking up the language, but the Spokane Tribe website offers language classes, so hopefully things are improving! Spokane doesn’t have its own original writing system, so a modified Latin script is used. You can read more about the Spokane and Salish languages and people on Wikipedia, here, here and here.
Example Words & Phrases ↓
Provided by Spokane Tribe at this link
ʔa x̣est skʷekʷst
Hello, good morning
ʔa x̣est sx̣lx̣alt
Hello, good day
ʔa x̣est sč̓luxʷ
Hello, good evening
ʔa x̣est skʷkʷʔec
Hello, good night
n̓em heł wíčtmn
I will see you again.
kʷʔec̓ščén̓?
How are you?
hi čn x̣is
I’m fine.
čn ayx̣ʷt
I’m tired.
čn weyt
I’m sick.
stem̓ ha skʷest ?
What is your name?
hi skʷest ____.
My name is…..
____ łuʔ hi skʷest.
My name is…..
Please correct me if I made a mistake
It is a good day to die
•London. Hyde Park. Midnight.
•A vacation dare among friends. You told them you never had a fear of the dark. So they bet you…you took the bet.
•An eerie sound echoes in the clear night sky. The stars wink at you from far above. The sounds of London can be heard yet you feel completely alone to face the dark night.
Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 1x02 Wendigo
Episode 1x02 Wendigo is far from being a fan favourite, and it’s not remembered especially fondly. However, I think it’s also far from being the worst The Show has to offer, and does a competent enough job of setting the tone and formula. It’s also vaguely reminiscent of The X-Files 1x05 The Jersey Devil, as well as Supernatural’s 303rd episode 14x16 Don’t Go into the Woods. While the latter of those was a bad choice so late in the show’s run AND essentially copied the wendigo episode, the kohonta was creepier in the episode, whistling and blending into the trees. That’s a discussion for much later (assuming I’m still alive when it’s time to talk about that episode), so back to 1x02 Wendigo which is a disappointing second outing for the boys.
The soundscape of the episode, however, is occasionally impressively cinematic, enhanced muchly with headphones. The lack of music during the cold open emphasised the wendigo’s bestial grumbling and growling, allowing the viewer to focus on that as opposed to a musical score. The music during the scene with the survivor from 1959on the other hand had effective scoring, evoking the tense, chilling atmosphere of horror films. One of the distinctive traits of Supernatural’s early years is its horror show atmosphere, something sadly lost somewhere around the beginning of series 3.
On the subject of horror films, the opening of this episode – and the plot in general - does, unfortunately, rely on the stupidity of young people to get the plot started. The ranger reveals to Dean and Sam that there are grizzly bears in the area, but the boys appear to have taken no precautionary measures whatsoever to keep themselves safe from bear attacks. I can brush aside the fact that grizzly bears don’t live in Colorado (Thanks to Annabelle @EscapingPurgatory podcast for bringing that to my attention) by the fact that Supernatural does not take place in our universe, so Alternate Universe Colorado can have grizzlies, but I have difficulty believing the boys would so blithely let their guards down in grizzly territory. They are asking to be grizzlied to death, and it makes the premise of the episode a little harder to believe, very much like a teen horror film reliant on teen stupidity.
By the way, the second guy to get snatched – and the one we hear the wendigo eating – is the late Cory Monteith whom people might know better as Finn in Glee.
The introduction of the wendigo establishes it as fast, dangerous, and very likely intelligent. It stalks the boys in the tent, picking them off one by one, and as the boy we’re supposed to care about (because he’s calling his sister) is hiding from it in the tent, the wendigo seems to be playing with him.
Following on from this effective yet deeply-flawed opening comes a dream sequence of Sam visiting Jess’s grave. This showed a small part of Sam’s grief, but it is about the most we ever really get to see of his bereavement. We’re TOLD Jess’s death effected him, but we’re never shown much at all. This is about as skilled a way to tell a story as dumping 20+ years of exposition on the viewer in the first ten minutes of a television show, and we all know Supernatural’s guilty of THAT sin. I understand the graveyard scene was supposed to be sad and moving, but as the viewer does not know anything about Jess or her relationship with Sam, it comes across as a weak attempt to make us care about her and him, but it does not work well. She does not like roses, and her full name is Jessica Lee Moore. This is the ONLY time her complete name is given, and most people will miss it. I only noticed it because the Finnish subtitles I was watching it with translated the gravestone for me – a very dull gravestone, might I add. Some candles and a crucifix, but nothing remotely resembling a worthy epitaph. Just ‛beloved daughter’. Did you even WANT us to care about her, Kripke?
On the other hand, it might be for the best the viewer does not know much about Jess. Given Sam’s awful taste in women, she would likely have just been another Amelia or Ruby.
The scene ends with a jump scare because of course it does, whereupon Sam wakes up in the Impala. The show is very much Sam’s perspective on things, as it will be for most of the next two score and ten episodes. Maybe I’m ageing out of Supernatural intended audience, but I find Sam’s POV hard to care about: I get he’s bereaved, but how much is it possible for me to care as a viewer when I know nothing about Jess and have to watch Sam essentially acting like a mildly disgruntled teenager about her death?
Dean, however, has evidently been privy to things the viewer has not, and shows genuine concern for Sam, even allowing him to drive the Impala. How people manage to conclude he doesn’t understand emotions is beyond me because he shows a lot of empathy.
As it happens, the co-ordinates in John’s diary from episode 1x01 lead the boys to Black Rocks, Colorado, where the boys from the cold open got grizzlied. I have to assume the IDs the boys make are highly convincing, because the amount of people they fool is too high for all of them to be stupid and gullible. That said, could the show not have knocked up some convincing forest ranger attire for the boys to wear? Without it, the brothers end up looking a bit incompetent at a job they’ve been doing for twenty years.
Sam’s reluctance to interview Hayley etc shows his disinterest in this case, desiring as he does to find Jess’s killer. Understandable as this is, neither he nor Dean have the foggiest who or what was responsible for Jess’s death. Finding John is the best hope they have of learning anything regarding Jess’s killer, something Sam should be very cognisant of considering Mary and Jess died in the same way. If Kripke wanted to show Sam not caring at all about anything, he didn’t do a great job here, since Sam comes across as a whiny child rather than an apathetic, anhedonistic widower. ‛Now we have to babysit, too?’ I understand he’s grieving, but he still acts like an immature arse-biscuit and has absolutely no control over himself.
Dean is the only person Sam has who could possibly give him any support, but instead of showing gratitude, he’s already treating Dean as if he’s an irritation.
While I’m talking about people acting like idiots, Haley rags on Dean’s hiking gear, but she sees fit to go hiking in incredibly short shorts. Do they not have nettles, burrs or ants in North America? Dean could go striding through a patch of nettles in those clothes completely unperturbed. Haley, however… I concede she’s right to be suspicious of the brothers for claiming to be rangers while not looking or acting the part, but they look more suited to their environment than she does.
She also sees the ruined tent covered in blood splatters and decides it’s a great idea to shout at the top of her lungs. Pillock.
For the longest time, I could never remember the hunter’s name, so I remember him as Leoben after the character the actor played in Battlestar Galactica. For Supernatural virgins, he appears as an experienced if short-tempered hunter whose hubris gets him ganked by the wendigo. It’s not an especially interesting or original role (this is Supernatural, after all), and did not do much other than point out that the brothers were not forest rangers and sneer at the idea of a protective circle.
For those in the know, however, he is a wasted opportunity: this could have been the perfect chance to introduce the hunters into the narrative, hunters who could have helped – or at least tried to help – the boys finding John. After all, John knew a lot of hunters but the boys are out here doing it all alone. Where’s Bobby, for example, or Ellen, Ash and Jo? I realise they hadn’t been invented yet, but still.
Why he is needed in the episode, I don’t know (other than to be horror-fodder) and his forehead might as well have been branded with ‛wendigo chum’ from the get-go (and not just because he’s a male one-shot character). The audience knows the supernatural exists, so his sneers do nothing for the audience other than show us we’re not supposed to care about him getting killed, just like we weren’t supposed to care about Token!black man or Cory Monteith in the cold open. A big drawback of the MOTW (monster of the week) format is the constant introduction and deaths of side characters we don’t care about, and Leoben is just another example of this.
Other than that, there’s little I can find to say about this week’s side characters as individuals. As symbols, the family of orphans trying to find their missing brother is a reflection of Dean and Sam searching for John, with their reunion at the end and Dean watching them leave suggesting hope finding John.
However, it’s possible Dean believes John is dead, as Amy and Annabelle at @escapingpurgatorypodcast discussed in their review of this episode. Whilst talking to Sam at the campfire, Dean talks about John having left them a legacy which it was their responsibility to carry. One does not generally speak that way about a person one believes is still alive, a perspective I otherwise would have missed completely.
I will attempt not to rehash much of what I hear and read in other people’s reviews and rewatches because that would be plagiarism and a waste of my time, but since not everybody is going to read, watch or listen to all the sources I do, I will occasionally reference their work. Something else raised in the same podcast is the discussion of Sam’s anger in this episode, and Dean’s exhortation that Sam let go of his anger because it will eat him up (not verbatim). So early in the show the two characters are not as distinct as they become later, and later on it is Dean who is show to have the anger issues (justifiably so, given the repeated betrayals and deception, and I’m mostly on his side in events at the end of s14 and the beginning of s15).
That he’s so aware of what anger does to a person is revealing. Having grown up watching John be consumed by anger and grief, and almost definitely dealing with his own anger and trauma this early in the show, Dean clearly knows how unhealthy holding on to negative emotions is. It’s an unusual opinion for people to have that Dean is very intelligent and very cognisant of his own emotions and feelings, but that’s how I understand him, and it’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
On the subject of emotions, I have to admit a little sympathy for Sam here. He’s incredibly young to have lost somebody, and bereavement is hell at any age. I can understand his anger, and his frustration that he has to ‛babysit’, even if his inability to express or control anything properly irks me. Grief doesn’t have to be clean or comfortable for people in one’s vicinity. That’s not to say everything is justified, but his possibly-pregnant girlfriend and possibly-child just died, so the guy needs a moment. It’s just not a great viewing experience.
I expect it would be easier to sympathise with Sam had the episode begun a few hours after Jess’s death and the viewer had gone through some of the grief with him. Buffy 5x17 The Body has its flaws, but it is lauded not least for its depiction of bereavement and grief right after a sudden unexpected death. I, at least, empathise strongly with Buffy during series 6 when she is suffering with depression, self-destructive tendencies and several kinds of grief, and the raw depiction of the loss of one of the most important people in her life helped me at least step into her shoes. Had the show done something similar for Sam, I would be singing a rather different song at the moment. But as it is, Sam is supposed to be the angst-ridden, self-centred character the intended very young audience empathises with, compared with Dean (and Buffy) who are far more mature and other-centred (funnily enough, Buffy was the same age as Sam in series 6), making them easier to like and relate to.
Finally, as this isn’t an episode I found all too much to dissect, I’ll get on to the final talking point: the wendigo. My first thought is that I’m glad Supernatural included Native American mythological creatures right at the beginning. I’ll have more to say later on Native Americans and Supernatural, lamenting their absence but also understanding that a show about two white-skinned men would run into difficulties with representation and accusations of appropriation when delving into Native lore (although Native Americans can be white-skinned, too). For now, however, it’s a welcome inclusion, though the execution is a bit weird.
For one thing, the wendigo is from Algonquin lore, originating in the area of the Great Lakes and eastern Canada. Dean was right to state that wendigo live in Minnesota and North Michigan (somehow leaving out Wisconsin between those two states) because that’s the general Ojibwe area. So what are they doing in Colorado, roughly 1000 miles away? That’s like a Sámi stallu appearing in Amsterdam or something. Of course monsters can travel, but why not just set the episode in Minnesota? They could have even gone to an Ojibwe reservation and included Native Americans as more than simply a bit of decoration.
Apropos Native Americans, the Anasazi symbols Dean draws to ward off the wendigo is from a completely different lore and mythology to the Ojibwe wendigo. Ojibwe is Algonquin, and Anasazi is from a different language family called Athapaskan, relatively closely related to Navajo, Dakota and Apache. Think of them a roughly similar to Indo-European and Uralic: It’s similar to using Celtic iconography to ward off a Finnish demon. There is, of course, nothing saying that the symbol wouldn’t work against a wendigo, but it’s an odd choice. I can chalk this up to more lazy research and the show generally not caring about any mythology that’s not Judeo-Christian, but I can also justify it by believing that it isn’t simply the symbols themselves that are effective, but the intent and belief of the caster also plays a huge role. This is simply my own head-canon, but it at least makes Dean’s actions make more sense.
The wendigo is also described in lore as being cold, preceded by an unseasonal chill and having a heart of ice. None of this is present is the show, a fact that is to its detriment. I expect budget limitations were a factor, but how much creepier and atmospheric would the episode have been if trees had dropped their leaves in the middle of summer, or if the mine were freezing, keeping the bodies from rotting? The wendigo at least looked right:
The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash-gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody ... Unclean and suffering from suppuration of the flesh, the Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption.
(Johnston, Basil (2001) [1995]. The Manitous. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press.)
In spite of my saying the cold nature of the wendigo wa absent, shooting it in the heart with a flare gun hearkens to its heart of ice (something Charmed also did, now that I think of it). The wendigo’s intelligence and ability to mimic human voices also has precedent in legend, as below:
One time long ago a big Windigo stole an Indian boy, but the boy was too thin, so the Windigo didn't eat him up right away, but he travelled with the Indian boy waiting for him till he'd get fat. The Windigo had a knife and he'd cut the boy on the hand to see if he was fat enough to eat, but the boy didn't get fat. They traveled too much. One day they came to an Indian village and the Windigo sent the boy to the Indian village to get some things for him to eat. He just gave the boy so much time to go there and back. The boy told the Indians that the Windigo was near them, and showed them his hand where the Windigo cut him to see if he was fat enough to eat. They heard the Windigo calling the boy. He said to the boy "Hurry up. Don't tell lies to those Indians." All of these Indians went to where the Windigo was and cut off his legs. They went back again to see if he was dead. He wasn't dead. He was eating the juice (marrow) from the inside of the bones of his legs that were cut off. The Indians asked the Windigo if there was any fat on them. He said, "You bet there is, I have eaten lots of Indians, no wonder they are fat." The Indians then killed him and cut him to pieces. The end of this Giant Windigo
As things stand, the wendigo was okay, but lacked some little details that could have made it much more memorable. As for the episode, it was not terrible, but neither was it a brilliant successor to 1x01. It had some nice character moments, but did not build much on what came before. It was mostly a filler episode, a bad choice so early in the series, and I’m glad to leave it behind for the Dean-centric 1x03 Dead in the Water.
Wendigo
The Apache call owls the messengers of death. We don't even play when this guy comes around, we just grab the rocks.
This inktober I've decided to take the spookiest stories from many reservations and turn them into a survival guide!
The Wendigo originated among the Algonquian Ojibwe, Eastern Cree, Saulteaux, Westmain Swampy Cree, Naskapi, and Innu tribes of North America. This creature is most often described as an enormous, gaunt, skeletal, and humanoid monster with viciously jagged teeth and claw-like hands. It is claimed that Wendigos possess a variety of skills that make them the ultimate hunters and predators, such as stealth, speed, night-vision, and the ability to mimic sounds in order to lure its victims. According to the legends, a Wendigo is created when a human resorts to cannibalism to survive. Because of this horrendous act, they are said to be cursed to wander the land, eternally hungry and seeking their next meal.
(Source)