Not really a spoiler, but edited.

 

I'll just put most of my comment in spoilers, leaving a final few thoughts out.

Spoiler

I believe that Suzie was assigned female at birth, but is a transgender boy. In universe, it seems possible that they have the "soul" of a boy or something like that, since supernatural characters (possessed uncle, blind grandma and ye olde ancestor) recognize Suzie's preferred gender. Suzie is happy to be referred to as male by the grandma, and is emulating their ancestor. I thought Suzie was male to female at first as well, but there are a couple of non-supernatural clues that point the other way. The dress thing you mentioned, and that the bullies refer to Suzie as a "dyke." The bullies seem unlikely to use an insult of Suzie's preferred gender, and would instead use "tranny" or something similar (unless they only recently met Suzie, which I can't really speculate to). Suzie is still feeling conflicted and ashamed (or hasn't fully come to terms with it) by their dysphoria (and so the taunts by the haunted uncle work), so they haven't told their friends yet.

I enjoyed the show. Loved Ambrose. Didn't like that Sabrina's problems were usually solved by someone else immediately knowing the answer (eg: the apple of spooky visions). This makes sense and is narative-ly interesting in when it's say, Madam Satan, giving the answers to manipulate Sabrina, less so when it's a relative. Gets better later on, I think.

Enjoyed everything about the witch culture; the school, the coven, the history between the coven and the town, even (especially?) the over the top satan worship. I'm excited to see where they go for the second season (assuming there is one).

 

@Dellez the wikipedia page says Netflix ordered 2 seasons upfront.

 

I liked the show overall and looking forward to the future parts. The SJW stuff was clearly present, but I didn't find it too preachy.

Spoiler: Susie

I think Susie is FtM who is still kinda in the closet. Friends suspect something is up of course, but Susie didn't actually come out to them yet. So maybe they think of them as a tomboy.

The most glaring difference with HP so far is lack of wands. And consequently, actual magic fights and duels.
The magic seems kinda ritual based with some exceptions, like Zelda pulling of Harvey's father off him and Sabrina turning on the radio.
Because of this it's kinda hard to tell what's gonna happen in direct conflict. If Sabrina is defenseless at any particular moment or not. It seems like magic has less consistency and is more of a plot device than it is in HP.

 

I felt a lot of her stubborn dig it deeper mentality was reasonably reflective of a naive teenager who had been giving some power and didn’t know what the hell to do with it.

Spoiler

I felt that the detail in the Satanic aspects and the fact that you even see the Dark Lord was very redeeming for all the book club rubbish.

Stuff like that I think was a link to show again that these are basically teenagers (and perhaps reflective of the current teen generation and how they feel about these things).

Also, I think Sabrina’a character occasionally tries to throw back to Sabrina the teenage witch vibes as being this fun, slightly ditzy girl with more power than she knows what to do with.

Definitely up for reading some fanfic, looks like you’ve had a good think @Taure might as well take the plunge...

 

Just saw on Instagram that there's going to be a "Christmas special" on 14 December. This makes me happy.

 

Spoiler

Jesus, they really hammed it up with Mrs Wardwell towards the end of the season, especially in the finale. Talk about shit writing. Madam Satan sounds unbelievably lame, but there were so many lame lines in ep 10 that it really shows that this one managed to stand out. Her storytelling scenes with Hawthorne were lame to the 10th power. I'm generally meh on the cheese and ham in shows.

But I did enjoy Sabrina's journey. I'd call it dark!Sabrina except it's not fanfiction.

 

Spoiler

She's named Madam Satan in the comics this is based on so I'm not seeing an issue here.

 

I know it's based on comics. That doesn't excuse the fact that it's lame.

I usually don't care about this in HP becaue we can operate on the scale of a country (when there are ~60 mln muggles then whether it's 10k or 100k wizards doesn't seem much of an issue) but given that Greendale is some town somewhere, is there any info on population? There sure seem to be many witches there. And is the Academy servicing only the Church of Night, as in does every coven have its own school, or is it more like HP, with one school taking in students from a large region?

 

Sabrina refers to the Academy as "one of the best" schools so presumably there are others.

As for "lame" titles, I think this is just a matter of acclimatisation. For example, Harry Potter is full of things that would appear lame on first viewing but become normal over time: Hogwarts, "Avada Kedavra", etc.

 

I've been watching this over the last few weeks, and really enjoyed it, although it didn't quite tip over into binging levels of enjoyment. My only real criticism would be how dark it is; I found it very difficult to make out what was going on at some points, unless I was in precisely the right spot. Other than that, it was a lot of fun, and I'm already looking forward to the Christmas special and series 2.

 

@Taure I never thought Hogwarts sounded funny because when I was 9 I only knew a few words in English. In Polish "Hogwart" actually sounds cool and very castle-like. So it's definitely what you said, plus the language barrier sometimes. I'll never be as fluent as a native speaker, so there'll always be things I miss.

 

The Christmas episode is out. I (mostly) enjoyed it.

 

CGI Sabrina head on child's body was the creepiest part. 10/10 nightmare fuel.

 

Wow I did not notice this was Cgi but my tv is shit to be fair. If you squint it is apparently HD. Not a bad episode other than usual irritating actions by Sabrina - time with mother her lets not push the point on her death as that would be too easy.

 

Young Sabrina was not actual CGI, just incredible casting https://www.instagram.com/p/BqvFJuqASJf/?utm_source=ig_embed

As for the show, it's alright. Much lighter than the comics, and covered in a sheen of teenage drama, but alright. Sabrina keeps digging her boneheaded hole of unlikeable-ness deeper and deeper, which gives them much character to improve in Part 2 (coming in April?).

As for fanfics, the scene is basically dead. There's a fair amount of stuff considering the show has been out for three months, but it's entirely junk. I think I found one fic that was readable, and it was just a one-off what-if? fic. There is potential, though.

I have toyed with the idea of writing a HP crossover, because there are some interesting things here. My first thought was seamlessly slotting CAOS into the HP world, which would work either as Taure said, as basically rewriting HP!America (because MACUSA, come on), or just establishing the existence of isolationist, "back-water" covens. The issue I then ran into for the latter is scope. If these are just isolated super old-school covens doing dark magic and worshipping a figure that may or may not be Satan, all you need is to get one owl (or even a muggle letter) to the American aurors and the gig is up. More than one HP style wizard in the CAOS world just means American Azkaban (is it on Cuba?) is getting a whole lot of new friends.

So I ran with the idea of just putting Harry in the Sabrina world. Works seamlessly, oldest cliche in the book. There's already conflict, humour, and lots of characterisation and drama to be had. Fish out of water moments aplenty, HP magic breaks everything and is blatantly overpowered, but the subtle effectiveness of CAOS curses and such offers meaningful resistance. You can always just strip Harry of his wand, at least at first, which I went with for my draft.

But. But. Despite all the juiciness of the initial setup, and the potential exploration of magic (and theology, oh my!), I quickly ran dry drafting ideas. CAOS is shallow. Even if you steal ideas from the comics, it's shallow (and Cthulhu? Now that's one way to derail your story completely!). We don't know anything outside of the small, half-a-season of canon. We know a plane on the way to Rome went down in 1998/9, we know at some point Ambrose and co-conspirators attempted to blow up the Vatican, and then we know what happened in the first season and the special. We do know about Riverdale (but that's irrelevant unless you are writing a teenage drama), but not much more. We know the world is bigger than we have seen (the bookstore owner), but we don't know anything about it. There are demons, ghosts, and presumably vampires (Archie's Horror). But we'd basically have to go full OC.

I think the show needs the second half of season 1 (and probably season 2 as well) to mature with before there's a decent base for writing fanfics with. It's like trying to write a HP fanfic in '97, before Chamber of Secrets.

But I'm still going to try, because I'm having a good time (and recently read some interesting books on theology I want to explore in fiction). I'm re-reading Dresden Files, with the idea to multi-cross (a terrible idea, I'm aware), if I feel the world runs dry too early. HP/Sabrina fics have potential, but not quite yet unless you make up a whole lot of supporting material yourself (or fuse with another compatible setting, like Dresden). I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes, and I really hope some competent writers takes up the mantle to establish this setting. AO3 or FFNet definitely won't, they are too busy with their songfics and addled ramblings.

Apologies for rambling, and for the month-old necro. But necromancy is thematic, is it not? And with a new season in 3 months, activity in this thread I assume will pick back up.

 

You know, she has an uncanny resemblance to Emma Watson.

 

The all went to the Leonard Nimoy School for Bushy Eyebrow Acting.

 

Season 2 Trailer:

 

Good fucking lord, not more wannabe edgy shit.

Actually, I don't mind too much. I saw half the trailer, and it's already a lot cooler '07's symbiote!spidey, and I stomached that.