The doppelgangers had the brothers’ memories, their feelings and thoughts, and yet they had been unable to truly understand what makes Sam and Dean tick, and I think that, ultimately, it will be that very human spark, that will bring about the leviathans’ downfall.
I really like this as a follow up to Slash Fiction - both because, as you say, it suggests the ultimate solution to the problem, and because it helps to establish the leviathans' individual characters. It's a thing they've done with shape-shifters before, of course, but it works really well to establish the monsters as something other - even if they're working hard to seem exactly like the person they've copied.
Also, as I mentioned before, so far the leviathans seem perfectly happy to eat sick people right out of hospitals, even though there are plenty of other places where they can feed. So why would they make the effort to cure humanity of cancer or AIDS first, especially considering that all those healthy people will then be pumped full of psychotropic drugs anyway.
While I agree there are bits of the leviathan plot line that don't mesh as well as they might, I don't think I find this particularly surprising. Leviathans are ambitious: they like the good life, luxuries, power, cheese sauce on their meet and all the trimmings. This seems to me to be an obvious move for a society switching from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a farming one. When they first arrived they were starving, presumably not having eaten for millennia, and they were taking huge risks in feeding. Roman couldn't control his people, and that was a problem: if humans discovered them, they'd probably soon be confronted by a mob armed with Borax and swords, and in the beginning they were at least relatively vulnerable.
At that point, the discovery of hospitals was a miracle - a safe place to sate their hunger. Who cares if the meat isn't in ideal condition? Now they've taken over a number of reasonably influential individuals, and they've been able to piggyback on human civilisation, letting them develop a taste for high-quality food - like Joyce and her ridiculously specific caffeine requirements. They've had to be less careful as time goes on, so we can see them feeding more freely; safety has become increasingly less of a concern. It seems logical to me that now they want every meal to be gourmet. So healthy meat, tender, well fed and properly prepared.
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Date: 2012-05-03 02:53 pm (UTC)The doppelgangers had the brothers’ memories, their feelings and thoughts, and yet they had been unable to truly understand what makes Sam and Dean tick, and I think that, ultimately, it will be that very human spark, that will bring about the leviathans’ downfall.
I really like this as a follow up to Slash Fiction - both because, as you say, it suggests the ultimate solution to the problem, and because it helps to establish the leviathans' individual characters. It's a thing they've done with shape-shifters before, of course, but it works really well to establish the monsters as something other - even if they're working hard to seem exactly like the person they've copied.
Also, as I mentioned before, so far the leviathans seem perfectly happy to eat sick people right out of hospitals, even though there are plenty of other places where they can feed. So why would they make the effort to cure humanity of cancer or AIDS first, especially considering that all those healthy people will then be pumped full of psychotropic drugs anyway.
While I agree there are bits of the leviathan plot line that don't mesh as well as they might, I don't think I find this particularly surprising. Leviathans are ambitious: they like the good life, luxuries, power, cheese sauce on their meet and all the trimmings. This seems to me to be an obvious move for a society switching from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a farming one. When they first arrived they were starving, presumably not having eaten for millennia, and they were taking huge risks in feeding. Roman couldn't control his people, and that was a problem: if humans discovered them, they'd probably soon be confronted by a mob armed with Borax and swords, and in the beginning they were at least relatively vulnerable.
At that point, the discovery of hospitals was a miracle - a safe place to sate their hunger. Who cares if the meat isn't in ideal condition? Now they've taken over a number of reasonably influential individuals, and they've been able to piggyback on human civilisation, letting them develop a taste for high-quality food - like Joyce and her ridiculously specific caffeine requirements. They've had to be less careful as time goes on, so we can see them feeding more freely; safety has become increasingly less of a concern. It seems logical to me that now they want every meal to be gourmet. So healthy meat, tender, well fed and properly prepared.