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shadowvalkyrieWow, quite a bunch of shows over the last few months. Being unemployed is awesome! (Except for, you know, the money thing. :p) Watch out, SPOILERS GALORE! (Okay, mild spoilers, mostly, but better safe than sorry, right?)
Almost Human
Very enjoyable classic (or rather, old-school) sci-fi, mixed with a healthy dose of buddy cop cliches. Conservative in its main topics (humans vs robots, risks of over-reliance on technology, morality issues) it nonetheless has some interesting and plausible ideas about how technology might develop and would be used. While it’s occasionally eye-roll-worthy, it does okay with race and gender issues overall, especially compared to most of its genre. The main characters are interesting and sympathetic and the two male leads seem to have been drafted specifically with a slasher audience in mind. It’s a shame the episodes apparently don’t air in the intended sequence, because that makes the character development erratic. Verdict: for the most part not as deep or clever as it wants to be, but a very engaging and fun show with some genuinely moving moments anyway.
Recs:
Oilslick, by Anythingtoasted (Dorian/John, NC-17, ~1,300 words, Warning: major character death) – hauntingly depressing story, but so good!
Lifelike, by Cadignan (Dorian/John, R, ~2,600 words) – antidote to the sadness, though this is bittersweet rather than happy.
Teen Wolf
I feel like I shouldn’t publically admit to watching this, because, well, teenage werewolves, but it actually is a surprisingly good show!
Sympathetic, non-cliched characters, interesting plot twists, few idiot-plot moments, interesting mythology, good action to character moment ratio, a sensible, grown-up treatment of teenage issues like first break-ups, an unusually-progressive-for-a-US-show treatment of sex, and a nice ensemble feel. Oh, and pretty boys. Who are objectified unlike anything I’ve ever seen on TV. It’s delightful. (And yes, I looked up the guy who plays Derek: he’s actually my age, so I’m allowed to perv on him, thank goodness!) The same can’t be said for the girls. The acting and (for the most part) characterisation are fine, but the wardrobe and make-up choices (and resulting lack of attractiveness) are extremely baffling.
It’s pretty obvious I’m out of the intended age group, though, because the most attractive characters to me are Derek and Allison’s dad. Whoops. (And Kate. Shame they killed her off. She was like a female version of Dean Winchester at his most ruthless. Kate/Derek was my favourite pairing of badhotwrongness. There should be more fic.) This is also why I noticed that – unusual for a young adult show – the parents are written as nuanced, interesting people with lives and problems of their own, not just adventure obstacles who happen to provide food and clean laundry.
So all in all, it’s really good for a show everyone over twenty pretends very hard not to watch.
Rec:
Any Port in a Storm, by Poisontaster (Derek/Scott, NC-17, ~88,400 words) – two fundamentally different people trying to understand each other, with mixed results; very mature and realistic story with fantastic characterisation and lovely prose.
Sleepy Hollow
Let’s see, this is a buddy-cop show with time-travel, parallel dimensions and demons… No wait, let me finish! Because the best is yet to come: the founding fathers are witches, involved in a cabal to stop the apocalypse brought on by a headless horseman. – Yes, it’s exactly as silly as it sounds (and I say this as someone with several years of SPN under her belt; trust me, SPN is Dogma material compared to a show that has zombie!George Washington), but nonetheless extremely enjoyable. (Unless you’re a sucker for historical correctness, I guess.) The horror is actually creepy!
And coming to this from SPN, you can be forgiven for thinking you’ve died and gone to feminist heaven: One of the two leads is a tough (yet somehow adorable and also stunningly hot) police woman, whose male companion treats her with genuine respect and refers to her as “Lieutenant” the entire time. They have plenty of sexual chemistry (and he’s crazy hot and adorable, too), but he’s married, so they are actually friends! And that’s not treated as a bad thing! <3 And there’s her even tougher sister, who is also fabulous, so there’s no token-female effect. And did I mention they’re both black? And cop lady has a black superior and an Asian and a Latino colleague? And they’re all written as interesting characters, not stereotypes?
The fact that an 18th-century white guy treats a black woman with more respect than many modern men do is a nice take-that to society at large. I love it! Same goes for the fact that Abbie and Katrina treat each other affably instead of annoyingly catfighting, even thought they’re technically supposed to be romantic rivals. I also love that characters communicate, instead of sneaking behind each others’ backs for unnecessary drama. It’s a whole new viewing experience!
Bonus for German viewers of the original: hilarious German lines. The translations themselves are comparatively okay, but it’s obvious that most of the guys reading them out have never even met a live German before. I think only one of them actually knew what he was saying. XD
Recs:
Five Times North Star Assistance Helped the English Guy, by Fyre (Gen, ~2,200 words) – brilliantly funny! Particularly if you’ve ever worked in customer support.
How Sweet the Sound, by Cadignan (Abbie/Crane, PG, ~5,500 words) – UST-filled and sad, in a very grown-up, non-wangsty way. Melancholy, yet also funny and cute, much like the show.
Once Upon a Time
I’ve only made it halfway through S1, but I don’t think I’ll watch any more. It’s just not my cuppa. Too saccharine and cutesy by far. I do like Emma, and their version of Rumpelstilzchen is disturbingly attractive (the modern-day version without the weird skin condition and gross teeth, anyway >.>), not to mention how hot the evil queen is, but it’s just not enough to keep me invested. And the show’s insistence on “hurray, birth families” and meant-to-be-together romance pisses me off. Their gender politics suck arse, too. There’s a thin feminist veneer over it, but underneath it’s all princes saving princesses same-old bullshit. Blah.
I don’t remember why I thought watching something fairy-tale-based when I despise most fairy-tales was a good idea in the first place, but I guess I expected something darker and more deconstructionist? *sigh* No luck there.
Archer: Vice
I’ve loved Archer for a while now. Brilliant show! Its sense of humour is occasionally nasty (beware the casual rape-jokes), but (un)fortunately, so is mine. (It helps that most of the rape jokes go at men’s expenses. I know that’s awful of me, but I actually mind them much less for it.) And despite doing its damndest to be un-PC, it mostly isn’t, really. At a closer look, it’s full of tough, flawed, interesting women, often plays subversively with clichés of gender, race, nationality, and sexual orientation, and in a roundabout way, calls out and criticises many of its own apparent jokes, if it doesn’t joke about the issue in a critical way outright. (“You killed a black astronaut! That’s like killing a unicorn!”) And many of the lessons it imparts on the characters are actually great (like when Burt Reynolds teaches Archer that he needs to grow the fuck up and see Malory as a person rather than just his mom). The animation is old-school in the best possible way, and I love the incredible amount of detail and random asides (both visual and with regard to dialogue) that went into every scene. (The deliberate anachronism stew in and of itself is delicious, too.) As an over-the-top parody of the spy genre, it works brilliantly.
The fifth season is no different, despite the sudden switch of genre. It’s executed in such a way that it makes perfect sense, saves the show from becoming boring or repetitive by giving it a fresh set of clichés to lampshade, and offers the established characters and dynamics new room to develop. Love it! <3
Recs:
Springtime for Krieger, by Coltsbane (Gen, PG-13, ~1,800 words) – cyborg-tastic shenanigans; hits the tone of the show perfectly.
Goldenfist, by Inlovewithnight (Sterling/Lana, Pam/Cheryl, R, ~2,300 words) – rebels make them do it; kinky hilarity, also spot-on.
The Musketeers
Remake # 57,855,342,876 and exactly what you’d expect from that. Especially the first episode is every single musketeer cliché you’ve ever seen, compressed into less than an hour. If you manage to sit through that without throwing things at your screen, I commend you. It gets slightly better after that, but it’s still completely unimaginative and predictable, plot-wise. Just pretty dudes having the same old dudely adventures you’ve seen a thousand times, surrounded by a surreal mixture of meticulous historical detail and baffling anachronisms. I’d have adored this back when I was twelve or so, but these days I’m mostly thinking, it’s a shame that the show is otherwise so well-made, because that’s a painful lot of wasted potential there.
So… I unapologetically watch it for the eye-candy and nothing else. Those are some fantastically pretty men! (D’Artagnan looks like a young Keanu Reeves. :o *grabby hands*) And whoever is head of the costume department: your leather kink may be historically questionable, but damn, girl, I’m not complaining!
Black Sails
This show is the polar opposite of the previous one: it’s the living, breathing proof of how engaging and innovative a classic historical adventure romp can be. I’d go so far as to tag-line it, Game of Thrones – with pirates! It’s not as epic or sprawling, and has no fantasy elements, but it offers the same sense of often-painful realism and that perfect mix of politics and action.
The historical research is great! There are some minor things, e.g. why can everyone read? where does Flint store that horse when he’s not actively using it? why do they not only eat potatoes, but peel them?, that bothered me, but it’s all nitpicking. Where it counts, they did their homework. The internal workings of a pirate crew, with its strong egalitarian and democratic elements, the benefits and issues thereof, as well as how it ties into the world at large, are beautifully depicted. You get a good look at the network of fences and suppliers that are vital to the workings of a pirate settlement (and routinely rip off even the most grizzled of fighters), and at the everyday struggles of its inhabitants. There are clerks and assayers and a dozen other people you never thought about, but now realise must have been there. It’s a merciless, beautiful deconstruction of the myth of the free, savage pirates with their treasures and adventures and rum-soaked life of debauchery. Watching unhappy, sunburned men scrape barnacles off their boat in tropical heat while bad meat gives them diarrhoea will inevitably evaporate all your misplaced outlaw romanticism.
Better yet, all characters are three-dimensional and interesting and behave like actual human beings with flaws, issues, and goals of their own. No designated heroes or villains anywhere to be found. You get the strong sense that every single one has a past that would be worth its own story. Most of the main characters are based on historical people (to name but two: Anne Bonney and Jack Rackham! – real pirates that I bet you’ve never seen on TV before), and as far as I can tell, they more than do them justice. There are people of colour and women with actual personalities and roles in the plot! There is even an f/f couple for whom their relationship is a plot point but not nearly the main focus of their characterisation. Bisexuality is a thing! It’s glorious!
The plot is free of clichés, dramatic yet funny, and the plot twists are genuinely surprising and well thought-out, with a real-life element of chance to them. The fight-scenes are realistically clumsy and graceless, and there’s no telling who’ll live or die in advance.
Only four episodes have aired thus far, but as you can tell, I’m already madly in love with it.
One caveat: trigger warning for explicit rape. (It’s thankfully not sexualised, though, but actually treated as something awful. It’s a gut-punch, but not in a meta sense of the show being gross about it that you so often get from other shows, but an in-story, emotional one. For me, this makes a huge difference!)
Almost Human
Very enjoyable classic (or rather, old-school) sci-fi, mixed with a healthy dose of buddy cop cliches. Conservative in its main topics (humans vs robots, risks of over-reliance on technology, morality issues) it nonetheless has some interesting and plausible ideas about how technology might develop and would be used. While it’s occasionally eye-roll-worthy, it does okay with race and gender issues overall, especially compared to most of its genre. The main characters are interesting and sympathetic and the two male leads seem to have been drafted specifically with a slasher audience in mind. It’s a shame the episodes apparently don’t air in the intended sequence, because that makes the character development erratic. Verdict: for the most part not as deep or clever as it wants to be, but a very engaging and fun show with some genuinely moving moments anyway.
Recs:
Oilslick, by Anythingtoasted (Dorian/John, NC-17, ~1,300 words, Warning: major character death) – hauntingly depressing story, but so good!
Lifelike, by Cadignan (Dorian/John, R, ~2,600 words) – antidote to the sadness, though this is bittersweet rather than happy.
Teen Wolf
I feel like I shouldn’t publically admit to watching this, because, well, teenage werewolves, but it actually is a surprisingly good show!
Sympathetic, non-cliched characters, interesting plot twists, few idiot-plot moments, interesting mythology, good action to character moment ratio, a sensible, grown-up treatment of teenage issues like first break-ups, an unusually-progressive-for-a-US-show treatment of sex, and a nice ensemble feel. Oh, and pretty boys. Who are objectified unlike anything I’ve ever seen on TV. It’s delightful. (And yes, I looked up the guy who plays Derek: he’s actually my age, so I’m allowed to perv on him, thank goodness!) The same can’t be said for the girls. The acting and (for the most part) characterisation are fine, but the wardrobe and make-up choices (and resulting lack of attractiveness) are extremely baffling.
It’s pretty obvious I’m out of the intended age group, though, because the most attractive characters to me are Derek and Allison’s dad. Whoops. (And Kate. Shame they killed her off. She was like a female version of Dean Winchester at his most ruthless. Kate/Derek was my favourite pairing of badhotwrongness. There should be more fic.) This is also why I noticed that – unusual for a young adult show – the parents are written as nuanced, interesting people with lives and problems of their own, not just adventure obstacles who happen to provide food and clean laundry.
So all in all, it’s really good for a show everyone over twenty pretends very hard not to watch.
Rec:
Any Port in a Storm, by Poisontaster (Derek/Scott, NC-17, ~88,400 words) – two fundamentally different people trying to understand each other, with mixed results; very mature and realistic story with fantastic characterisation and lovely prose.
Sleepy Hollow
Let’s see, this is a buddy-cop show with time-travel, parallel dimensions and demons… No wait, let me finish! Because the best is yet to come: the founding fathers are witches, involved in a cabal to stop the apocalypse brought on by a headless horseman. – Yes, it’s exactly as silly as it sounds (and I say this as someone with several years of SPN under her belt; trust me, SPN is Dogma material compared to a show that has zombie!George Washington), but nonetheless extremely enjoyable. (Unless you’re a sucker for historical correctness, I guess.) The horror is actually creepy!
And coming to this from SPN, you can be forgiven for thinking you’ve died and gone to feminist heaven: One of the two leads is a tough (yet somehow adorable and also stunningly hot) police woman, whose male companion treats her with genuine respect and refers to her as “Lieutenant” the entire time. They have plenty of sexual chemistry (and he’s crazy hot and adorable, too), but he’s married, so they are actually friends! And that’s not treated as a bad thing! <3 And there’s her even tougher sister, who is also fabulous, so there’s no token-female effect. And did I mention they’re both black? And cop lady has a black superior and an Asian and a Latino colleague? And they’re all written as interesting characters, not stereotypes?
The fact that an 18th-century white guy treats a black woman with more respect than many modern men do is a nice take-that to society at large. I love it! Same goes for the fact that Abbie and Katrina treat each other affably instead of annoyingly catfighting, even thought they’re technically supposed to be romantic rivals. I also love that characters communicate, instead of sneaking behind each others’ backs for unnecessary drama. It’s a whole new viewing experience!
Bonus for German viewers of the original: hilarious German lines. The translations themselves are comparatively okay, but it’s obvious that most of the guys reading them out have never even met a live German before. I think only one of them actually knew what he was saying. XD
Recs:
Five Times North Star Assistance Helped the English Guy, by Fyre (Gen, ~2,200 words) – brilliantly funny! Particularly if you’ve ever worked in customer support.
How Sweet the Sound, by Cadignan (Abbie/Crane, PG, ~5,500 words) – UST-filled and sad, in a very grown-up, non-wangsty way. Melancholy, yet also funny and cute, much like the show.
Once Upon a Time
I’ve only made it halfway through S1, but I don’t think I’ll watch any more. It’s just not my cuppa. Too saccharine and cutesy by far. I do like Emma, and their version of Rumpelstilzchen is disturbingly attractive (the modern-day version without the weird skin condition and gross teeth, anyway >.>), not to mention how hot the evil queen is, but it’s just not enough to keep me invested. And the show’s insistence on “hurray, birth families” and meant-to-be-together romance pisses me off. Their gender politics suck arse, too. There’s a thin feminist veneer over it, but underneath it’s all princes saving princesses same-old bullshit. Blah.
I don’t remember why I thought watching something fairy-tale-based when I despise most fairy-tales was a good idea in the first place, but I guess I expected something darker and more deconstructionist? *sigh* No luck there.
Archer: Vice
I’ve loved Archer for a while now. Brilliant show! Its sense of humour is occasionally nasty (beware the casual rape-jokes), but (un)fortunately, so is mine. (It helps that most of the rape jokes go at men’s expenses. I know that’s awful of me, but I actually mind them much less for it.) And despite doing its damndest to be un-PC, it mostly isn’t, really. At a closer look, it’s full of tough, flawed, interesting women, often plays subversively with clichés of gender, race, nationality, and sexual orientation, and in a roundabout way, calls out and criticises many of its own apparent jokes, if it doesn’t joke about the issue in a critical way outright. (“You killed a black astronaut! That’s like killing a unicorn!”) And many of the lessons it imparts on the characters are actually great (like when Burt Reynolds teaches Archer that he needs to grow the fuck up and see Malory as a person rather than just his mom). The animation is old-school in the best possible way, and I love the incredible amount of detail and random asides (both visual and with regard to dialogue) that went into every scene. (The deliberate anachronism stew in and of itself is delicious, too.) As an over-the-top parody of the spy genre, it works brilliantly.
The fifth season is no different, despite the sudden switch of genre. It’s executed in such a way that it makes perfect sense, saves the show from becoming boring or repetitive by giving it a fresh set of clichés to lampshade, and offers the established characters and dynamics new room to develop. Love it! <3
Recs:
Springtime for Krieger, by Coltsbane (Gen, PG-13, ~1,800 words) – cyborg-tastic shenanigans; hits the tone of the show perfectly.
Goldenfist, by Inlovewithnight (Sterling/Lana, Pam/Cheryl, R, ~2,300 words) – rebels make them do it; kinky hilarity, also spot-on.
The Musketeers
Remake # 57,855,342,876 and exactly what you’d expect from that. Especially the first episode is every single musketeer cliché you’ve ever seen, compressed into less than an hour. If you manage to sit through that without throwing things at your screen, I commend you. It gets slightly better after that, but it’s still completely unimaginative and predictable, plot-wise. Just pretty dudes having the same old dudely adventures you’ve seen a thousand times, surrounded by a surreal mixture of meticulous historical detail and baffling anachronisms. I’d have adored this back when I was twelve or so, but these days I’m mostly thinking, it’s a shame that the show is otherwise so well-made, because that’s a painful lot of wasted potential there.
So… I unapologetically watch it for the eye-candy and nothing else. Those are some fantastically pretty men! (D’Artagnan looks like a young Keanu Reeves. :o *grabby hands*) And whoever is head of the costume department: your leather kink may be historically questionable, but damn, girl, I’m not complaining!
Black Sails
This show is the polar opposite of the previous one: it’s the living, breathing proof of how engaging and innovative a classic historical adventure romp can be. I’d go so far as to tag-line it, Game of Thrones – with pirates! It’s not as epic or sprawling, and has no fantasy elements, but it offers the same sense of often-painful realism and that perfect mix of politics and action.
The historical research is great! There are some minor things, e.g. why can everyone read? where does Flint store that horse when he’s not actively using it? why do they not only eat potatoes, but peel them?, that bothered me, but it’s all nitpicking. Where it counts, they did their homework. The internal workings of a pirate crew, with its strong egalitarian and democratic elements, the benefits and issues thereof, as well as how it ties into the world at large, are beautifully depicted. You get a good look at the network of fences and suppliers that are vital to the workings of a pirate settlement (and routinely rip off even the most grizzled of fighters), and at the everyday struggles of its inhabitants. There are clerks and assayers and a dozen other people you never thought about, but now realise must have been there. It’s a merciless, beautiful deconstruction of the myth of the free, savage pirates with their treasures and adventures and rum-soaked life of debauchery. Watching unhappy, sunburned men scrape barnacles off their boat in tropical heat while bad meat gives them diarrhoea will inevitably evaporate all your misplaced outlaw romanticism.
Better yet, all characters are three-dimensional and interesting and behave like actual human beings with flaws, issues, and goals of their own. No designated heroes or villains anywhere to be found. You get the strong sense that every single one has a past that would be worth its own story. Most of the main characters are based on historical people (to name but two: Anne Bonney and Jack Rackham! – real pirates that I bet you’ve never seen on TV before), and as far as I can tell, they more than do them justice. There are people of colour and women with actual personalities and roles in the plot! There is even an f/f couple for whom their relationship is a plot point but not nearly the main focus of their characterisation. Bisexuality is a thing! It’s glorious!
The plot is free of clichés, dramatic yet funny, and the plot twists are genuinely surprising and well thought-out, with a real-life element of chance to them. The fight-scenes are realistically clumsy and graceless, and there’s no telling who’ll live or die in advance.
Only four episodes have aired thus far, but as you can tell, I’m already madly in love with it.
One caveat: trigger warning for explicit rape. (It’s thankfully not sexualised, though, but actually treated as something awful. It’s a gut-punch, but not in a meta sense of the show being gross about it that you so often get from other shows, but an in-story, emotional one. For me, this makes a huge difference!)
