Extra 4: Recs from tDiE
To kick of the Shadowhunter Hiatus (WOE) we figured we would give you some suggestions on how to keep busy, during this difficult time.
We discuss Black Sails (TV), The Dresden Files (Book), The Amulet of Samarkand (Book) and our overwhelming, and possibly unhealthy, love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV) as well as talking about fandom and how we got into it. That should hopefully keep you busy for a while!
Come talk to us on Twitter and Tumblr, or email us and please review us on iTunes.
29th June 2018 @ 8:27 am
So, as I mentioned on Twitter, I have recs for you!
First of all, on the book front, allow me to suggest, some day if you’re in the mood for a space opera, the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Seen from a slightly more mature lens, Weber is maybe a little more yay!capitalism and boo!socialism than ever pinged me back in my 20s when I first began reading the books, and eventually the series (as long series often do) sort of fell victim to a certain bloat of scale as the cast of characters kept increasing and the situations became more complicated. He also leans on the sexual-assault-as-traumatic-backstory button a little heavily in a couple cases, but since (again) this was a series that started something like 20 years ago, some allowances must be made for the fact that few people understood why that wasn’t a great way to give your protagonist a sad backstory.
All that said, it’s literally Horatio Hornblower in space, with a plotline largely derived from the pre-Napoleonic Reign of Terror/First Republic for the first 8-9 books (there are even characters named Saint Just and Rob. S. Pierre.)
It’s the first military sci-fi I ever encountered with a female protagonist, one whom the author does truly seem to respect and admire and who very obviously isn’t there for the sake of titillation. It has a strong cast of female characters and characters of color (even Honor herself is of half-Asian descent) in a society that is largely egalitarian in its handling of the sexes and races (though sometimes a little obnoxiously heavy-handed about congratulating itself for that fact when it comes across less “civilized” cultures.)
It’s unfortunately sparse on the queer representation unless you read between the lines (though it’s surprisingly pro-polyamory and ultimately not just in the sense of the plural, sometimes-oppressed wives you see with one society you meet in the second book) and may have other issues I’m not remembering to point out because it’s been a while since I’ve read it and I would probably notice things now that I didn’t before, but I remember really finding the books notable and unique for the time they were written and worth checking out.
Also, there is a race of intelligent, empathic, six-legged, arboreal-dwelling “cats” that form soul-bonds with humans. I mean, COME ON!
Now, onto TV.
Since the whole #SaveShadowhunters thing began, you may have seen me talking about two different series over on Twitter, and I’m going to take the opportunity of NOT being in character-limited format to explain why you should check them out.
The first is Babylon 5.
Babylon 5 springs from the genius of J. Michael Straczynski, whose name some people might recognize as being in the credits of Sense8 right alongside the Wachowskis’ (in fact, in the telepath conflict that plays out in the fifth season of Babylon 5, you can see a vague blueprint for a lot of the homo sensorium/homo sapiens conflict from Sense8.) Babylon 5 was not always a brilliantly acted show, but it WAS always a brilliantly written show, and that’s thanks to JMS.
See, before he ever pitched it to the networks, JMS laid out a very detailed plan for a five-year story arc. There comes a point at which you notice there are far fewer stand-alone episodes and it’s all story arc, for two and a half seasons. And that’s because those 2.5 seasons were written by JMS. All of them. Every. Single. Episode. Something like 50+ episodes back to back. He wrote half of season 2, and ALL of seasons 3 and 4. So you can imagine the sort of narrative…cohesiveness…happening thanks to this approach (even as you wince sympathetically for poor JMS.)
Other writing credits include a lot of Star Trek alums (like DC Fontana, Peter David, David Gerrold, Harlan Ellison) and even Neil Gaiman for one episode.
And while I say the show wasn’t always brilliantly acted, that’s not to say that there weren’t brilliant performances. Andreas Katsulas as G’Kar springs immediately to mind as someone who (once he settled into the character and overcame some clunky writing) was a powerhouse from start to finish. Likewise Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari, and astonishingly, Walter Koenig as the least Chekov-like, most chilling recurring antagonist you could never imagine him playing. There were some truly inspired guest appearances as well, such as Michael York, whose storyline (in the episode “A Late Delivery from Avalon”) textualizes the loud echo of Arthurian legend that resonates throughout B5 (in fact, the ship in a short-lived spin-off series was actually named Excalibur.)
For its time, this show actually did slightly better than Buffy with queer and POC representation. One of the main characters is Black, and one of the main characters is sapphic, and while both of those characters have storylines that through a more contemporary lens are problematic, as with Tara’s death on Buffy, they didn’t understand at the time that it was problematic.
In fact, in some ways it was very ahead of its time; there’s one plotline where two male characters literally have an Undercover Married plot. And this is notable for the fact that, while it was a hilarious plot, the punchline was never that they were two men who were married. It was that they were two characters who would drive each other INSANE if they ever even thought of getting married. And it was completely straightforward the way the show just worked it in that this was their cover for the mission they were going to undertake; no one batted an eye (except for the horrified “but we’ll drive each other crazy” thing) which means that same-sex marriage was totally the law of the land in-universe. Not bad for a show in the 90s.
The thing that, two decades later, strikes me about this show is that it was never a show about the romantic relationships. Which is not to say there aren’t couples you can ship, because there definitely are, but what ends up being the most gratifying story of the whole series is the dynamic between G’Kar and Londo, which is never about romance in the slightest. By the time they speak their last lines to each other at the end, your heart is just breaking for them both because they’ve come so far.
It’s very rewarding the way the writing is handled, a lot of the time. There will come moments in season 3 and 4 when you realize some insignificant detail from season 1 that you barely remember is suddenly back and relevant and you’re just like “…wow? I had no idea they were laying groundwork for this plotline that far back.” But they totally were.
Unfortunately that ends up working against them in the fifth season. See, JMS laid out a 5-season plot arc. But then the show was facing cancellation after season 4, so they scrapped a bunch of the season 5 side plots and compressed the rest into season 4 so that the arc would be fully resolved. Then suddenly the show got picked up by a new network for the final season, and they had already resolved most of the plot that had been planned for season 5, and one of the actors wanted to move on so they wrote that character out and gave the plotline that was obviously supposed to feature that character to a new character who didn’t have the necessary character background for it to feel relevant or impactful.
And yet, even with all that, the last few episodes of season 5 made me cry buckets full of tears.
You know that moment in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King when Sam says “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” and then carries Frodo up the mountain while a hugely dramatic version of the “Into the West” theme plays, and you bawl your eyes out, and then later at the end when Frodo is about to set sail for Valinor at the Grey Havens and another rendition of the “Into the West” theme plays and you bawl your eyes out AGAIN? And from that time on you can’t hear the “Into the West” theme without getting choked up?
There is a piece of music from the season 5 finale that is like that for me even now, twenty years later. It just hurts so, so beautifully.
So yeah. Babylon 5. Brilliant written, so-so acting, but overall just a wonderful show.
Be aware that there is some confusion about what you should watch when, with regard to the 2-hour special movies that were released while the show was on the air. You can completely skip “Thirdspace” and “The River of Souls.” They’re not at all necessary to grasp what is happening in the series.
“In The Beginning”, however, is different. And you might be tempted to start with that movie at the beginning, before watching “The Gathering” (the 2-hour pilot movie.)
Don’t. Don’t watch “In the Beginning” until AFTER the 2-part episode in Season 3 titled “War Without End.” Just trust me on this.
Okay. And now onto my last recommendation. Yuri on Ice.
I know, I know, it’s anime and maybe you don’t watch anime?
I don’t either. Except for YOI I literally never have watched anime in my life.
Watch it anyway.
First of all, it’s an EASY thing to watch. It’s twelve 22-minute episodes. Four and a half hours. No real time investment required.
Watch it some day when you’ve had a rough day and you’re feeling disheartened. It will make you feel better. It will make you HAPPY. Believe me, as an American, November and December of 2016 were truly a TERRIBLE time, and this sweet, funny little anime became a sort of oasis of joy for me in the middle of all that despair.
Now, if you’re not familiar with anime, you probably don’t have any prejudices about subtitled-vs-dubbed versions. I’m going to do what no real anime purist would never do and tell you to watch the dubbed version instead of the subtitled version.
Yes, the accents are terrible. But having watched both versions (several times each) I will say that where the dubbed version succeeds is that it often will translate the INTENT of a moment instead of the straight text of the script. For instance, there is one point where the title character is terribly embarrassed and the subtitled version has him talking about how others will think his ideas are way too stupid and immature, whereas the dubbed version just has him shouting dramatically “I’M GOING TO GO CRAWL UNDER A ROCK AND DIE!” and it’s just a lot funnier and true to the spirit of the moment.
Also the subtitled version keeps translating a word that is deliberately meant to be gender neutral (“lover”) to “girlfriend.” So when one character asks the other character if he’s in a relationship, he’s literally asking with gender-neutral wording “do you have a lover?” but the subtitles version assumes a m/f relationship instead (“do you have a girlfriend?”)
Because this anime is absolutely meant to be as gay as it seems. But it’s not yaoi. It’s not fetishized mlm content. It’s a sports anime about figure skating that just happens to have mlm content.
And it’s sweet and funny and wonderful and it will make you feel good.
Beyond that, it actually has some extremely subtle and nuanced writing. There are SO MANY LAYERS once you start dissecting it on a meta level, down to instrument choices in various songs having significance and little, easy-to-overlook details suddenly changing your understanding of everything that happened. There is even a point where you suddenly feel like you need to go back and rewatch the first 4 episodes because several things actually weren’t what you thought they were, because Yuri is the most unreliable narrator EVER.
I can’t really say too much because I don’t want to spoil it, but I would be happy to debrief with you after you watch it.
So anyway, those are my recs. Enjoy and if you decide to check out any of this, let me know and I will dish with you as much as you want.
29th June 2018 @ 10:05 am
So… just quickly, before I actually fully read everything else… lol
I’ve really been wanting to get into yuri on ice! Anime isn’t my thing but male figure skaters? falling in love? Most definitely is, and I thought that might be a great floodgate to anime, who knows?
I did a tiny bit of research, downloaded the anime app that was streaming it (original with subtitles, but you make interesting points!) LOVED the title sequence, and them got endlessly frustrated at having adverts every 3 minutes and the app was clunky and the episode kept freezing, so I had to start over, with MORE adverts… long story short I kind of gave up and haven’t tried to find it anywhere since. I’m really bad about illegal downloads and bothering to find them. I just wanna but something on dvd and watch it ::eyeroll::
So… any tips where I can find the dubbed version so I can try this again? 🙂
30th June 2018 @ 10:58 am
sorry! I wrote that yesterday when your comment came in and only just saw that it got stuck in our own moderator queue. for… wordpress reasons ::shrug:: silly technology…
30th June 2018 @ 11:03 am
If you want the subtitled version, you can find it on http://www.crunchyroll.com/. The dubbed version is on https://www.funimation.com/.
I assume those two sites are international, but I’m not sure. I think you can get a free trial for, like, a week or two and then a subscription for a month is only something like $6-7.
I know that Funimation released the show on DVD in the states but I have no idea about the UK.
If all those fail, let me know. I’ll help you find less…legitimate sources.
25th June 2018 @ 7:35 pm
I completely missed your reply to this and the rec episode as well it seems. Is it on Itunes? I will check in a bit.
I am currently listening to a Buffy podcast and it has made me feel all nostalgic. There was a lot of stuff that I had forgotten about but some scenes and quotes just stay with you forever. I have been thinking out getting my old boxsets out and rewatching the show. I haven’t watched since the show ended I think so it’s been a while. Who knows, age might have changed the way I feel about Buffy and Angel, I might have gotten milder in my opinion… I might use my holidays next month to give her and the show another go. Oz was great but he wasn’t on the show long enough. Spike is my fave along with Giles and Drusilla. I don’t know about you, and like I said, I haven’t watched the show in years. But by the last ep, I didn’t really care fo any of them any more. In my recollection, they had all changed a lot and not for the better. I know they had gone through a lot by then and I don’t remember much of the details but I hardly liked anyof them anymore. I will be interesting to see if I still feel the same way all these years later…
26th June 2018 @ 11:36 am
Always interesting to revisit things after a long absence.
I have to confess, I have really very little ability to distance myself from Buffy to work out what I actual think about the characters with all my critical faculties – certainly on a general global scale (episode by episode is slightly different). I love them all forever and ever amen.
5th June 2018 @ 6:57 pm
I’ve never seen Black Sails, I think my dad has the first 2 seasons on dvd. I have no idea what The amulet of Samarkand is about. I don’t think I’ve ever seen The Dresden Files. If I remember correctly, didn’t James Marsters voice the audiobooks? I might have listened to one… but I think I lost interest when I found out that he wasn’t doing the tv series. Oooh, Buffy… do you think that Ruth will still want to know me once she finds out about my unending intense dislike for both Buffy and Angel? Perhaps my unending and intense love for Spike will somehow make up for it… 😁 I look forward to those discussions!
15th June 2018 @ 2:55 pm
Hello! Sorry for massively slow reply (#saveshadowhunters…)
I do not hate you for disliking Buffy. She is my hero, and I love her, and I think you are wrong! But I do not hate you ;p
No, in all seriousness, I do get people who don’t like Buffy as a character (or at least I think I do), but as long as you think the show is full of awesome, I can deal with all else.
Oz was my favorite and I over identified with early Willow to a slightly concerning degree. Also obvs Spike is awesome.