Birdwings

Still on my Teen Wolf kick, I ran across some commentary for the unbelievably creepy scene of Allison looking at Lydia in the hospital, filled with flashcuts to extreme gore. I had wondered if it might be in reference to the murder tape in Lost Highway. No, it apparently was inspired by Carrie and The Shining (neither of which I've seen), but that's not the part that impressed me and sent me all in a dither to make this post.

The director of the episode was Russell Mulcahy, who directed 39 other episodes of this show, along with the original Highlander movie!

And also, the first episode of Jeremiah! WHHAT?

He got his start in music videos, which explains why he's so connected to an MTV teen drama, and I know Teen Wolf is frequently derided as a bad show, but it is a damn fine looking one, and Mulcahy is obviously a big part of that, with his stylish directorial chops making everything 80% more arthouse than it needs to be.

And apparently I'm a HUGE FAN. He's one of my favorite directors! By accident! Always read the fine print! (I mean, clearly I did, or the name Mulcahy wouldn't have eventually rung a dim bell and made me look him up, but it took me long enough).

This guy is the secret sauce that connects all three of the fandoms I write for. WHO KNEW?

I published the Erin & Smith vignette: Displacement. This ended up a tidy 1,776 words, and took a ridiculously long time to complete. I had the ending last year, and a couple pivotal lines of dialogue on the way to it. The rest was up in the air, and Mister Smith is rarely a cooperative character (hard to be, when his whole canonical shtick is that nothing about him is ever explained), so I drew a blank on finishing it and left it to simmer. Cue a couple weeks ago, when I finally got another line, and managed to stitch the needed conversation together, and all of a sudden it was done.

So I'm well underway with this series, because I don't want it hovering over my head another year. Progress report on the rest:

Elizabeth - Basically done. A nice happy AU.
Kurdy - Finally have a good, solid idea for him (thanks, Killa). Unwritten. Involves grief, so will have to wait for me to be in the right frame of mind.
Theo - Obnoxiously flirty fluff. Half-done, I guess? It feels insubstantial, which just proves why I Fail at Fluff.
Libby - I know what I want it to be, but I'm not sure I can get there. A glorified synopsis.
Jeremiah - Messy angst. Half-done.
Lauren - Triple dose of angst. Near-complete!
Lee - Written ages ago. Needs a total rewrite, but I think the bones are good.
Sims - What's the opposite of a nice happy AU? Maybe I'll post it on my birthday, because this has no other reason to exist.

Mostly, I'm just relieved that writing is starting to gain some momentum again. I've got an idea for a Kurdy & Sandor fic when these are mostly cleared from the queue, and I've even started to get a bit of mental energy for my Teen Wolf series that's still hanging over my head unfinished. Start small, work up to big. And probably I needed the summer away from writing to recharge, or something. So forward march, while the weather is good.

Actually finished one of my "Erin teaches random Jeremiah character swordfighting" vignettes! It's been sitting incomplete for ages, and the missing convo snapped into my head and it was done. Hurray.

In other ficwriting news, I am officially scrapping my idea for a Jeremiah/Brimstone crossover. That universe is simply too dark, and I don't want my favorite characters anywhere near it. The fun has gone out of the premise, and I'd rather expend my mental energy on something more positive.

I almost never read anything in the current zeitgeist. I have lately been engaged in the project of transcribing my reading list, which I somehow managed to keep without interruption since 2007, and is currently floating around on a messy stack of loose notebook pages in a desk drawer. It seems worth creating a digital copy as back up, and is giving me a nice trip through my memories, but anyway, it is incredibly rare for me to ever read a book in its year of publication. And while Project Hail Mary is from 2021, the film came out this year, so I'm counting it as a sudden swerve into cultural relevance.

For the most part, I enjoyed the book a lot! I have to dock it a star for some nitpicky stuff, but the core of the novel, the friendship between Ryland Grace and Rocky, was almost absurdly affecting. It was also fun for documenting the intricacies of first contact, and inventing a genuinely alien species. I can understand why few sci fi storytellers take this approach, as it would really limit the possibilities of planetary romance if humans and aliens can't even share the same air, but it works so well here, the limitations making a launchpad for some wonderful creativity.

The optimism of the story was also appreciated, although plenty of horrific disaster movie stuff was happening offscreen. I did get nervous around the three quarter mark (my trust in anything modern and critically acclaimed is extremely limited, having been burnt too many times by "charming, nostalgic, warm, funny" novels featuring random scenes of child abuse - I swear, cover blurbs are written by critics who read the first two chapters and the last page), so I flipped to the last pages ( to a reverse spoiler of the kind of thing which does not happpen at the end )

I was also impressed by how carefully the author couched the math and physics lessons, smartly recognizing where the general audience might get lost in the weeds. I think that's why he made Ryland Grace an improbable middle school science teacher, despite his absurd overqualification for the job. I didn't find it that hard to believe (some people are hellacious underachievers in life, and the point is made that Grace is conflict-averse), and it worked great for dumbing down the concepts for the lay reader (like myself).

On the other hand, this did mean the prose was (deliberately, I assume) extremely juvenile. Sometimes I felt like I was speed-reading this thing. It reads on the unchallenging end of the YA spectrum, and the humor is pretty much on that level as well. Some works, some is groanworthy.

The weakest aspect were the flashbacks, which started out as a compelling part of the amnesia process, but gradually revealed some significant flaws, as absolutely every character was extremely surface level. They felt less and less real, and by the time I hit the American scientist whose entire personality was based on robotically oversharing about his sex life, I was genuinely thinking the twist was going to be that he was a 12 Monkeys style psycho trying to sabotage the mission, because who talks like that? Dude was so weird. In the end, I think it was just another attempt at humor, but it really took me out of the novel. His robotic behavior creeped me out so badly that I still suspect ( spoilers about his fate )

Anyway, those problems made the story somewhat uneven, but it didn't really matter. I inhaled it in under a week, because it was just so easy to turn the page, and the central story and relationship was so compelling. I can see why it got big.

I dragged my feet over this one, because last time I watched it, I only knew one of the guest stars (Lindsay Crouse from Buffy) and that gave the episode a fun aspect, what with watching Maggie Walsh get to be a reasonable human being. Unfortunately, since that viewing, I've watched a season of White Collar, and now recognize Tim DeKay. Watching lovable G-rated G-Man Peter Burke be a sleazy college professor gave me the ick, which, when combined with the villain of the week's horrific backstory, made me rather reluctant to sit down with this one a second time.

It actually gets quite fun once the investigation gets underway, though. ( Read more... )

Peter Gabriel made the credits theme! That alone should have kept this show from cancellation. Philistines.

A lot changes from the pilot to this episode (which was fifth in airing order), but also, this episode feels like it was running long and lost most of the establishing shots and some fairly important introductions on the cutting room floor. I was confused several times, and this makes me wonder if that's why the episode got bumped. ( Read more... )

Karl Urban and Keith Urban. Not the same person. Apparently not even related, although both were born in New Zealand. Also, I've actually seen Karl Urban before! Dude was Eomer in The Lord of the Rings! Not that I've seen that in over twenty years.

As is fairly common with mistreated shows, Brimstone aired massively out of order before getting cancelled. Broadcast dates make a complete mess of the first half of the truncated season we got. However, at some later date, broadcast order was switched out for something fairly close to a proper viewing order, with both my fanmade DVD and the upload using this nearly correct listing - although I'm not sure when that redesign happened, or who was responsible, as everything online still just lists the episodes in broadcast order.

Since I already watched the show, and remembered a couple very confusing moments (chiefly when a recurring guest character shows up unexplained in one episode, and then in the following one actually arrives in town), I spent this evening checking the episodes for discrepancies and making a Suggested Viewing Order for anyone interested. ♥

1. Pilot (also sometimes called Altar Boys)
2. Poem
3. Heat
4. Slayer
5. Encore (very important to watch this AFTER Slayer)
6. Repentance
7. Executioner
8. Ashes
9. Lovers
10. Carrier
11. Faces
12. It's a Helluva Life (this normally gets listed before Faces, but it forms a natural thematic pairing with the final episode as both break the case of the week format)
13. Mourning After

I just finished this first darling season of television. I was completely charmed by the original TARDIS team, who got incredible character evolutions. The Doctor slowly bonds with his abductees, and becomes something of the heroic figure we know and love, going from a ruthless disinterest in anyone not named Susan, to being equally devoted to his companions' safety, to willingly remaining on an alien planet to cleanse their poisoned water supply. His temper and pride remain, but he learns to be better, and finds his sense of humor and adventure and even compassion for others. It's beautiful.

Meanwhile, Barbara goes from absolute hysterical panic to being strong and level-headed, adapting to the crazy life she must now lead yet also being the most aware of history and grappling with the reality of people who died hundreds of years ago. Ian starts out taking the leader position, because the Doctor borders on useless, but over time he is given reason to trust the Doctor (he's frequently rendered helpless, waiting on death row or getting poisoned, which allows for his surrogate family to save him) and becomes a team player.

They end up with a genuine family dynamic that I have rarely seen on TV. Ian and Barbara are close and supportive, which can be read as romantic, but it isn't declared openly, so it can never become the focus. What we are given is therefore a girl, her grandfather and what amounts to an adoptive aunt and uncle. This is far more unusual than the later Pond family dynamic, which (despite the time travel complexity) boiled down to two couples who just happened to be blood relatives, so the focus there was always on the romantic interactions. Most television I've watched keeps a focus on couples, coworkers/friends, or siblings, with some parental issues to shake things up. Grandparents, though? Aside from 12 Monkeys, with the coolest, fiercest Team Grandma in existence, I'm drawing a blank. Maybe it's only an artifact of this being a family program, but it's a welcome change regardless, and I found it endlessly charming.

Which is good, because a lot of these serials pad for time by splitting up the cast in endless ways. The reunions are always super heartwarming and adorable, bringing a smile to my face. I'm actually kind of dreading the bust up of this original team, because they're so sweet, and I'm not ready to move on to a post-Susan timeline.

Now, about Susan. The main takeaway I found online when looking up some of these episodes was people expressing irritation as her for screaming so much and being wasted potential. Which hits an old wound for me, as a child of the 90s when the Not Like Other Girls treatment of female characters was absolutely everywhere in the media I consumed, in which more feminine characters would get looked down on or scolded. And I was a more feminine, quiet child, so seeing female characters who had the gall to need rescuing getting hit with "why can't they just rescue themselves? why are they so useless?" always hurt a bit. It had a "how dare you require help?" vibe.

Anyway, Susan is the character I most identify with, and while not my favorite companion, certainly the one who is most accurate to how I would behave in such a situation, so she has my complete compassion. Her boldness while on Earth was clearly a result of what she stated in 'An Unearthly Child.' She was happy there. She just wants to be able to go swimming without it being an acid sea. She enjoyed walking at night, in the fog, not because she was a bold explorer later retconned into a helpless damsel, but because she felt safe doing so. Now that she's thrown back into hostile, terrifying environments, she wants it to stop. She's the hesitant one, who doesn't want to leave the TARDIS, who doesn't want her little family group split up, because she already lost her first one under mysterious, but obviously deeply traumatic circumstances.

When her grandfather orders her to go with the rest of the team and leave him on a solo mission, she instantly turns the teleportation dial on her wrist, saying afterward that goodbyes are too hard. She already lost the rest of her family, her friends and her planet, so she knows what she's talking about here. Her grandfather sends her away and she's mentally trying to prepare for never seeing him again. It's a heartbreaking detail. Likewise, she tries a self-sacrifice to keep her companions safe during 'The Sensorites,' in which she begins to hone her psychic powers, and it plainly comes from a place of desperation. She is so often frantic, wishing for things to stay the same, yet forced by the necessities of time travel to remain on the move, never getting to settle down. I hope her eventual TARDIS departure is not too sad, and leaves a window for her to have a happy ending.

Very wonderful character dynamics all around. This may become one of my very favorite TARDIS teams, and watching the Doctor grow into the Doctor is quite fun. I'll probably make another post about the actual episodes and my favorites. I'm so glad most of this show is available on YouTube! It's such a nice end of night treat, because every episode is a brisk 20 minutes.

Every Sunday, I get together with my mother and we watch episodes of alternating TV shows she decided to purchase on DVD. The roster has included Criminal Minds, which I have been very nervous about watching, because this show is infamous for being packed with dark and twisted serial killers - but I didn't want to try and influence her opinion of the show, and the discussions about the episodes have been enjoyable, so I hung in there and decided I would stick with it until we got to an episode with no catharsis.

I was not expecting that to be episode seven. I thought it would take at least until season two for serial escalation to really get going, but they really slammed the accelerator to the floor quite fast.

Up to that point, the show was mostly a suspense procedural with slightly darker than average cases, but with a heroic cast of characters determined to bring killers to justice. The focus was on the team using their wits to crack cases. The tone was that of a thriller, with a race against time to successfully save the current target, and some pretty exciting standoffs with the criminals. It was like a grittier NCIS, and I was fine with it.

Anyway, it hit the skids with episode seven. No catharsis. Way too much focus on the horrible crime, and its victims, and the sheer horror. Damn, I've got real life for horror and despair, I do not need to tune in every other week to get punched in the face for caring. Our conversation afterward was mostly to the tune of "that was well made, but it was horrible, and now we both feel bad." Then episode eight kept going down the same path toward being an incredibly gnarly show full of non-stop serial killer torture, and (with the trust broken by episode seven) my mother asked to bail rather than stick with to the close of the episode. I was more than happy to agree. She was astonished that a show airing on CBS in 2005 would be this nihilistic, and then she did some research and discovered it only gets worse.

So we're done with that show! More time to spend on better things! That bundle of DVDs is sailing out the door, frisbee-style!