I will preface that I have no problem with gore and I am not complaining about bad manners, I am specifically talking about painful audio triggers. Misophonia. Nails on a chalkboard but *more*. Short circuit your brain, lock up your muscles more.
Yes I realise that Supernatural started out as a horror show. Again, not the issue. Kripke era is without doubt my favourite. I understand the difference between a fun "ew that's gross lol" cringe (which I enjoy for the record) and a physically painful neural response to sound. You can do horror and gore without hitting painful sound frequencies. There was no reason to include them apart from, I assume, some push the boundaries edgelord sound engineer wanting to leave his mark on the industry by going beyond atmosphere and into disgust. It's not disgusting though, not really, at least not first and foremost. It just hurts.
This episode is one of a handful from Supernatural that I can. Not. Watch. At least not without mute and subtitles. Unfortunately it's also a mythology arc episode. The series on the whole had a nasty (and infuriatingly unnecessary) habit of throwing in random painful chomping slurpy mouth sounds with no warning, but at least most were in skippable/monster of the week episodes, or even just over with quickly enough that you could grit your teeth and clench your fists til they were over (not as if that makes it ok). Not this one though. Putting these sounds so prominently in such an important episode is ableist to people with neuro divergences that cause sounds sensitivity, and it's unacceptable and unforgivable tbh. I still like Supernatural for more reasons than I dislike it, but seriously this one is such a big mark for the dislike column. Complaining about it now can't fix what's done, but it still needs to be said. Hopefully one day someone with power will listen and this will stop being a thing that people *need* to complain about.
Yes I realise that Supernatural started out as a horror show. Again, not the issue. Kripke era is without doubt my favourite. I understand the difference between a fun "ew that's gross lol" cringe (which I enjoy for the record) and a physically painful neural response to sound. You can do horror and gore without hitting painful sound frequencies. There was no reason to include them apart from, I assume, some push the boundaries edgelord sound engineer wanting to leave his mark on the industry by going beyond atmosphere and into disgust. It's not disgusting though, not really, at least not first and foremost. It just hurts.
This episode is one of a handful from Supernatural that I can. Not. Watch. At least not without mute and subtitles. Unfortunately it's also a mythology arc episode. The series on the whole had a nasty (and infuriatingly unnecessary) habit of throwing in random painful chomping slurpy mouth sounds with no warning, but at least most were in skippable/monster of the week episodes, or even just over with quickly enough that you could grit your teeth and clench your fists til they were over (not as if that makes it ok). Not this one though. Putting these sounds so prominently in such an important episode is ableist to people with neuro divergences that cause sounds sensitivity, and it's unacceptable and unforgivable tbh. I still like Supernatural for more reasons than I dislike it, but seriously this one is such a big mark for the dislike column. Complaining about it now can't fix what's done, but it still needs to be said. Hopefully one day someone with power will listen and this will stop being a thing that people *need* to complain about.