Is anyone else watching this? I watched the first three episodes last night and I'm hooked. It pretty much hits the spot on every level: setting, atmosphere, writing, themes, and most importantly, character.

The one thing I have reservations about is the Christian mythology with Satan etc. I do enjoy the themes of having to decide between mortal and witch worlds, between freedom and power etc. but I feel they could have been executed just as well with a more fantastical and less religious mythology. You could still keep all the occult stuff... just don't commit to the existence of god, Satan, etc.

But that's just my aesthetic preference. I tend to feel like the certain existence of god and an afterlife rather lowers the stakes of any storyline.

Other than that, I absolutely love the show. Sabrina in particular is great fun to watch, as is her cousin Ambrose. The romance is actually sweet rather than sickly, mainly because of the genuine chemistry between Sabrina and Harvey.

And obviously, crossover potential with HP is huge here.

PLEASE REMEMBER: SPOILERS SHOULD BE TAGGED AS SUCH.

Trailer:

 

Sabrina is likeable, the romance is endearing, the magic is interesting, and there's a lot of effectively creepy stuff.

I'm on episode four and I love the show.

The old cast reacting to the new show.

 

There's more than one character I'd like to see as an Umbridge replacement.

The idea that intellectual brilliance and magical prowess are correlated appears to be present here too. However, the mechanics of this world's magical system remains unclear.

Cool demons too.

 

I'm enjoying it so far. It reminds me quite a bit of Anita by Keith Roberts - which was also about a young witch growing up, though in Anita's case it was set in Britain, Anita lived with her grandmother (who was great) and the humour in Anita is all British.

 

I love that Michelle Gomez and Richard Coyle are in this. They're great actors and I've never watched anything either of them have been in and not enjoyed their performance - regardless of my feelings about whatever the show is.

I also like the atmosphere and the modern take on school life, even if sometimes the teeny drama makes me roll my eyes.

I've not made it too far yet, just halfway through ep 3 but I would say the bits I don't like are those which press against my understanding of the previous Sabrina tv show. This Hilda zelda dynamic, Satan and his overarching interest in Sabrina, the overly English guy in dressing gown and the lack of magic in general. I would've preferred it to be a bigger part of their household and life when there are no mortals around.

 

Yep. There's only been a few glimpses into the magic of this world. The first few episodes focused a lot more setting the scene, but with that out of the way and most major players introduced, I hope that we'll see more magic in season 2.

Though you do bring up an interesting point: what's up with all the English people? It seems they're arbitrarily English or American sounding.

 

I've started watching it, and I like it a lot. One of the thing that really struck me was the cinematography. From what I understand, the story is based on a comic book and I feel like the tv show reflects that pretty well. Their use of contrast, lights and framing just screams comic book to me, and it actually helps me get pass some suspension of disbelief moment more easily because of that. I agree with the presence of Magic like Blorcyn said: I would've liked to see a bit more in their day to day life: like turning the kettle on with a flick of their finger for example. Small things, but that would have reinforce the feeling of a witches' house.

 

I binged this the first two days. Sabrina gets really annoying late in the season.

 

Just finished today. Loved the take on it, right level of dark to be enjoyable without being actually scary. I agree the magic system and respective power levels are confusing. Sabrina does very little magic and seems to rely on her family a lot for help but does have some magic. It seems that there is inherent spellcasting ability and then more power is granted when the book is signed. So it’s not clear if an individual witch’s power reflects only what has been granted to that individual by the Dark Lord, or if there is something inherent in the witch (suggested?)

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For example, the fact that Sabrina has the power to use hellfire - is this her or specifically granted by Satan. If it is a ‘pureblood’ type ideology suggesting that she is powerful as inherited power from Edward, this doesn’t really fit with her being a half-witch.

Interesting plot points to answer -

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- what is this prophecy that relies on an exorcism and resurrection (also I had a thought that it would have been a great twist if turned out Tommy’s soul had actually reunited with his body but Lilith lied, so in fact she had rescued him prior to Harvey shooting him)
- Father blackwoods weird plan for the males?
- visions of Dorethea? Are these indices by Lilith?
- baby girl Blackwood
- did people think that ambrose was on the school grounds when in the foods seeing the thirteen? Also any repercussions to Hilda using some kind of love potion on Luke?
- obv her parents were killed...

 

Watched the entire season in one day, loved it. Can't wait for more.

 

So I watched the last two episodes of this last night.

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I get where people are coming from when they say Sabrina got annoying towards the end: she became Sabrina "I can fix this" Spellman, just digging herself into a deeper hole. However, I didn't have a problem with it. I think the arc was true to her established character, and it had a satisfying resolution in which she learnt her lesson and paid a significant price.

All in all, I'm pretty damn stoked for the next season. That ending scene.



So much awesome in one shot - the culmination of her character arc through season 1. I'm a complete Kiernan Shipka convert.

The weakest parts of the season were the couple of episodes which were effectively "monster of the week" type episodes (like the sleep demon), but even they were still pretty good and generally did some significant characterisation work.

The magic is quite interesting too. So far as I can tell, the power mechanic is something like this:

1. Witches have different levels of innate power.
2. Signing your name in the Book of the Beast grants you more power, but it is not the same for all witches.
3. Given that Satan doesn't seem to be able to decide who gets how much power, perhaps signing your name in the Book simply unlocks the individual's full power which was already dormant within them and inherent to them.
4. Sabrina had a fair amount of power even before she signed her name, and is now in the top 4 most powerful witches in history.

I think a developing story line will be Sabrina discovering that her power comes from herself, not from Satan. Satan seems to be stuck with Sabrina, unable to gift a more malleable witch the same power, and the whole concept of conjuring and binding Satan suggests that he does not have ongoing dominion over a witch's power. Also the discovery that witches have power independent of Satan ties in to the feminist themes of the show.

I still have reservations about the Christian mythology, but given the above observations about magic, my reservations are less pronounced.

Now, a piece of speculation: Sabrina saw her mother in limbo. We were told that limbo is for people who died before their time. So this all but confirms that Sabrina's parents were murdered by magical means.

So let's talk fanfiction.

FYI, there's already 95 Chilling Adventures of Sabrina fics on AO3. A lot of Zelda-focused fics, oddly, and no proper novel length efforts, but it's early days yet.

Some obvious divergences:

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- Sabrina signs her name in the book in episode 2 at her dark baptism.

- Sabrina doesn't sign her name in the book in episode 10.

- Sabrina doesn't obliviate Harvey in episode 1.

- Sabrina takes the "plea bargain" offered in episode 3, where she attends the Academy full time and only returns to Greendale once a year.

As for Harry Potter crossovers, I can think of two main ideas:

Dimension/time travel

Harry gets dumped in the Sabrinaverse, which is a separate universe to his own. I think this would work best with a late-teens Harry, maybe HBP or DH, or immediately post-DH. Harry/Sabrina romance, and lots of fun "fish out of water" moments for Harry, both in terms of his tagging along to attend a Muggle American high school in 2018 (smartphones just keep breaking every time he touches them), and in terms of Sabrina-verse magic working very differently to his own.

Fusion fic

In this, the Sabrinaverse is just how Americans practice magic in the HP universe.

I think the only change that would be absolutely necessary to make this work would be to be more ambiguous about the Christian/Satanic mythology behind the magic i.e. don't show Satan on screen, and have most non-American wizards scoff at the idea that Satan exists. Probably this "Satan" is just a particularly powerful heliopath, they say.

Other than that change, obviously American magic functions quite differently to the HP magic we know, but they're not so far apart that you can't imagine them existing in the same world. Some of the core mechanics - like the lack of exhaustion, but the existence of varying power between witches and warlocks - are quite similar.

A plot line that presents itself is that Harry arrives at the Academy of the Unseen Arts to teach a course as a kind of guest teacher.

If you really wanted to, you could still write this as Harry/Sabrina, but you'd have to tackle the age difference. Probably from Sabrina's side it doesn't matter - I doubt the Church of the Night has much of a problem with teacher-student relationships or age differences. It's Harry who's the problem

The other crossover possibility is obviously Community, since both take place in "Greendale".

And yeah, Dresden Files is probably the most natural crossover.

 

Just watched the first episode. Not as bad as I thought it'd be! There's some heavy-handed SJW pandering in there, but the bulk of the episode was entertaining. I find it refreshing how so much bad shit happens to Sabrina and she hardly gives a fuck. It's barely part of her day.

Hilda's a great character so far, and a good juxtaposition for the rest of them.

Lol, noticed that too. I've never seen someone achieve a perfect :< before.

I kept getting disturbed by how powdery her face was. She'd wake up in the middle of the night just caked in powder.

 

Who's brilliant idea was it to do that retarded fisheye blurry lens shit? I'm 20 mins into episode 1 and this is ridiculous.

 

It's magic scott! The fish eye lens is magic! I totally agree, it's a little irritating at first, but I found I made peace with it relatively quickly.

Ambrose talks about a veil between witches and mortals, I find myself wondering if in later episodes or seasons we'll find this camera shorthand - that witchy things are happening - will turn out to be narratively important, and actually represent something important in that divide between mortals and witches. Probably not. Would be neat though.

 

I'm four episodes in. The progressive stuff is cringy, but negligible--unless it gets more obnoxious later. I am liking it though, probably more because of similarities to HP than its own merits tbh. I don't write xovers and some that I came across in the past are just dumb (HP/Mass Effect, wtf), but if someone wrote HP/CAOS stuff, I'd take a look at it.

The scariest thing so far was that girl saying she'll go blind. My greatest fear.

 

Yeah, fish-eye lens wasn't great, which they must have realised because they dropped in from episode 4 onward.

I found the SJW stuff interesting, because it presented it from an angle I had never really considered before. To me it has always seemed quite puritanical, all about imposing rules on people. But here it's presented as a form of teenage rebellion, not so different from any other form of teen rebellion. That makes it more interesting and more tolerable to me, because as a form of teenage rebellion, it doesn't have the narrative stamp of unequivocal approval. For example, in the scenes regarding the "book ban", both sides are presented - on the one hand, the teens don't want censorship, on the other hand, the principal quite reasonably calls a PTA meeting so the parents can decide what material is age-appropriate.

Similarly, I didn't feel all that "hit over the head" with the stuff going on with Susie's character. Like, the show never explains what her deal is or argues about it with the viewer. She just is. I mean, having watched the series fully, I still don't really know what the deal is with Susie. Is she biologically male and transitioning to female? That one seems the most likely, given that all her friends refer to her as a "her", but older characters call Susie a "he" -- but then what was the deal with the dress? When she is told that she's an abomination, she puts on a dress, i.e. conforms to female stereotypes. So that makes you think she's biologically female and wants to transition to be male? But then why do all her friends refer to her as female?

Ultimately it doesn't matter, and I like that the show didn't take the time to explain what's going on there to the audience. That would have felt like being hit over the head with it. Instead the show just lets the character be whatever she/he is.

 

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I gotta say, when Satan visited Zelda's dream and was like "does it contain onions" I cracked up.

@Taure, what was it about tagging spoilers?

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Like demon Apophis.