Things on Screens
Jun. 24th, 2021 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaI got a wonderful gift in the Exchange of Interest:
all I ever meant to do was keep you
It's John and Grace, both separately dealing with their grief - Grace helping out a friend with their art store, John occasionally using the store as a place to warm up. It's wonderful, and full of heart. And clever little plotty twists. It's basically everything I could ask for in a fic. I love my fandom.
Pertinent to the last post about We Are Lady Parts, here are some other medias I have consumed in the past months.
War of the Worlds (2019)
Set in contemporary France, this Anglo-French reimagining of H. G. Wells' classic in the style of Walking Dead follows pockets of survivors forced to team up after an apocalyptic extra-terrestrial strike.
Weird, sometimes terrible and sometimes wonderful. Very violent. I liked the scope of the story, I liked a lot of the survivor storylines, but some of them were just dire.
I drifted between hate watching and fascinated watching. I liked the mystery and horror of the alien robots - they were based on those angry door-opening quadruped creations. (Weren't they on Sherlock??? Or maybe Elementary?)
I liked the way they played with science concepts - tracking the alien signals, figuring out how to hurt them, I liked the strange empathy between Emily and the alien dog-bots. I tolerated the 'blind character is mysteriously cured by alien ~stuff' storyline - can we ever have a disabled character who doesn't have a magical cure? I was not thrilled by the 'we are wed on the astral plane' storyline. I hated the incest-rape storyline, I hated the thing that I always hate in apocalypse stories which is how everyone ends up fighting and lying to each other. On the other hand, there was lots of survival logistics, which is something I love about apocalypse stories. (Why can't I have that alternate universe from The Walking Dead where they live on that prison ground and have a big vegetable garden??)
On the whole, it was extremely unbalanced storytelling, but there were enough interesting ideas for me to check out the next season.
Creamerie
Eight years after a viral plague decimated all men, three dairy farmers from Hiro Valley accidentally run over the last surviving male human on the planet.
*nervous gigglesnort* When NZ makes a dark comedy, it's... really dark. This is set eight years after a virus has killed 99% of men. The three main characters are dairy farmers. The ruling body is a group of beautiful blonde women straight out of Mean Girls. The show is very pointy, looking at peformative feminism, fertility politics, mental health. It's really funny, it's really smart, there is a lot of semen.
Basically a rollercoaster between laughing hysterically, dying inside, and wanting to weep. In a good way.
Alex's righteous anger and rebellion gave me life the whole way, and her story had great resolution.
I will never be over the last surviving man hiding inside a giant anthropomorphised mooncup costume. The Menses-fest episode was a blast.
Just as I was starting to think "well, this was great, but I don't see how they can sustain this for another season" it ended on a massive cliffhanger. So I will definitely tune in for S2 if it happens.
Shadow and Bone
Very competently done, lots of fun to watch. Don't have fannish feelings about it in particular? But I did enjoy yelling BIN BONS every time Kirigan was on screen. I kind of felt sorry for the volcra, to be honest? And the CGI stag. Poor old stag.
Beforeigners
The series takes place in Oslo, where sudden flashes of light appear in the bay in Bjørvika. People from different time periods—the Stone Age, Viking Age, and the 19th century—suddenly appear in the present. Police officer Lars Haaland meets the first "time migrants", who speak Old Norse.
Nearly two decades later, the so-called "Beforeigners" struggle to integrate into modern Norwegian society. Some 19th-century individuals found work as journalists, office workers, and teachers, while most of the old Norse folk are homeless and sleep in parks. The Stone-Agers mainly live at the fringes and in forests. Some modern Norwegians perceive these "refugees" as a drain on society.
This sounded kitsch as fuck to me, and I avoided watching it for a few months after it came out, because subtitles mean I can't crochet while I watch, so I save those times for things for which I have higher expectations. But then! I figured out how to crochet and read at the same time, so subtitled shows were back on the menu, and I'm glad, because this series was fabulous. 10/10, would watch ten more seasons of this. Second favourite thing this year, next to We Are lady Parts.
It's a kitsch idea but they dive into wholeheartedly, and that's why it works. The stories are complex and nuanced. You realise that people are people, no matter the timezone: our supposedly modern emotional sophistication is not as modern as you'd think. The writers build a total infrastructure around these refugees, and it's funny (the hipster gruel cafe that the Viking refugees go to ) and heartbreaking (watching a shield maiden quail at what modern cancer treatment puts you through) and sometimes both (Lars's wife leaves him for an Edwardian man and lives her life as a neo-Edwardian woman.) There are conspiracy theories squished inside conspiracy theories.
Also Alfhildr Enginsdottir, the first Viking-era police recruit is A GODDESS. I just cannot with how much I love her. I love everyone? But Alfhildr is my girl.
Clarice
*sigh* What a strange confluence of things this was. So much of it was murky and oddly paced. And pointlessly stylised. It was Hannibal, with no plot. And yet, and yet. If the show had been called Ardelia, and been about Ardelia's career path in the shadow of her famous friend, I would have watched it forever.
Ted Lasso
This was sold to me as delivering good feels of a similar calibre to The Good Place, and I was not misled. It's the story of an American football coach imported to the UK to coach soccer, when he has no experience at all.
I was continuously ready to cringe, and I don't think I actually did once? The show is sweet and gentle, without being saccharine or maudlin. I cried, but in a good way. I love every single character, except for the one played marvellously by Anthony Head, and his character I love to hate.
It is truly lovely.
This is really just going to be a list of characters: Rebecca! Higgins! (Higgins and his post-firing Van Dyke jazz beard! Nate! Roy! (Roy up to his eyeballs in a wheelie bin of ice water!)
KEELEY. I mean. Keeley. Keeley, loving who she is, helping Rebecca love herself. Finding love and grabbing hold of it. Keeley. <3 <3 <3
Even Jamie Tartt, I felt for at the end. How the fuck did this show make me have empathy for that little twerp?
I love where Season One ended: you don't have to win the big match to have a happy ending. And I'm just in time for S2 to start.
Onwards and upwards, trying to be more posty!
all I ever meant to do was keep you
It's John and Grace, both separately dealing with their grief - Grace helping out a friend with their art store, John occasionally using the store as a place to warm up. It's wonderful, and full of heart. And clever little plotty twists. It's basically everything I could ask for in a fic. I love my fandom.
Pertinent to the last post about We Are Lady Parts, here are some other medias I have consumed in the past months.
War of the Worlds (2019)
Set in contemporary France, this Anglo-French reimagining of H. G. Wells' classic in the style of Walking Dead follows pockets of survivors forced to team up after an apocalyptic extra-terrestrial strike.
Weird, sometimes terrible and sometimes wonderful. Very violent. I liked the scope of the story, I liked a lot of the survivor storylines, but some of them were just dire.
I drifted between hate watching and fascinated watching. I liked the mystery and horror of the alien robots - they were based on those angry door-opening quadruped creations. (Weren't they on Sherlock??? Or maybe Elementary?)
I liked the way they played with science concepts - tracking the alien signals, figuring out how to hurt them, I liked the strange empathy between Emily and the alien dog-bots. I tolerated the 'blind character is mysteriously cured by alien ~stuff' storyline - can we ever have a disabled character who doesn't have a magical cure? I was not thrilled by the 'we are wed on the astral plane' storyline. I hated the incest-rape storyline, I hated the thing that I always hate in apocalypse stories which is how everyone ends up fighting and lying to each other. On the other hand, there was lots of survival logistics, which is something I love about apocalypse stories. (Why can't I have that alternate universe from The Walking Dead where they live on that prison ground and have a big vegetable garden??)
On the whole, it was extremely unbalanced storytelling, but there were enough interesting ideas for me to check out the next season.
Creamerie
Eight years after a viral plague decimated all men, three dairy farmers from Hiro Valley accidentally run over the last surviving male human on the planet.
*nervous gigglesnort* When NZ makes a dark comedy, it's... really dark. This is set eight years after a virus has killed 99% of men. The three main characters are dairy farmers. The ruling body is a group of beautiful blonde women straight out of Mean Girls. The show is very pointy, looking at peformative feminism, fertility politics, mental health. It's really funny, it's really smart, there is a lot of semen.
Basically a rollercoaster between laughing hysterically, dying inside, and wanting to weep. In a good way.
Alex's righteous anger and rebellion gave me life the whole way, and her story had great resolution.
I will never be over the last surviving man hiding inside a giant anthropomorphised mooncup costume. The Menses-fest episode was a blast.
Just as I was starting to think "well, this was great, but I don't see how they can sustain this for another season" it ended on a massive cliffhanger. So I will definitely tune in for S2 if it happens.
Shadow and Bone
Very competently done, lots of fun to watch. Don't have fannish feelings about it in particular? But I did enjoy yelling BIN BONS every time Kirigan was on screen. I kind of felt sorry for the volcra, to be honest? And the CGI stag. Poor old stag.
Beforeigners
The series takes place in Oslo, where sudden flashes of light appear in the bay in Bjørvika. People from different time periods—the Stone Age, Viking Age, and the 19th century—suddenly appear in the present. Police officer Lars Haaland meets the first "time migrants", who speak Old Norse.
Nearly two decades later, the so-called "Beforeigners" struggle to integrate into modern Norwegian society. Some 19th-century individuals found work as journalists, office workers, and teachers, while most of the old Norse folk are homeless and sleep in parks. The Stone-Agers mainly live at the fringes and in forests. Some modern Norwegians perceive these "refugees" as a drain on society.
This sounded kitsch as fuck to me, and I avoided watching it for a few months after it came out, because subtitles mean I can't crochet while I watch, so I save those times for things for which I have higher expectations. But then! I figured out how to crochet and read at the same time, so subtitled shows were back on the menu, and I'm glad, because this series was fabulous. 10/10, would watch ten more seasons of this. Second favourite thing this year, next to We Are lady Parts.
It's a kitsch idea but they dive into wholeheartedly, and that's why it works. The stories are complex and nuanced. You realise that people are people, no matter the timezone: our supposedly modern emotional sophistication is not as modern as you'd think. The writers build a total infrastructure around these refugees, and it's funny (the hipster gruel cafe that the Viking refugees go to ) and heartbreaking (watching a shield maiden quail at what modern cancer treatment puts you through) and sometimes both (Lars's wife leaves him for an Edwardian man and lives her life as a neo-Edwardian woman.) There are conspiracy theories squished inside conspiracy theories.
Also Alfhildr Enginsdottir, the first Viking-era police recruit is A GODDESS. I just cannot with how much I love her. I love everyone? But Alfhildr is my girl.
Clarice
*sigh* What a strange confluence of things this was. So much of it was murky and oddly paced. And pointlessly stylised. It was Hannibal, with no plot. And yet, and yet. If the show had been called Ardelia, and been about Ardelia's career path in the shadow of her famous friend, I would have watched it forever.
Ted Lasso
This was sold to me as delivering good feels of a similar calibre to The Good Place, and I was not misled. It's the story of an American football coach imported to the UK to coach soccer, when he has no experience at all.
I was continuously ready to cringe, and I don't think I actually did once? The show is sweet and gentle, without being saccharine or maudlin. I cried, but in a good way. I love every single character, except for the one played marvellously by Anthony Head, and his character I love to hate.
It is truly lovely.
This is really just going to be a list of characters: Rebecca! Higgins! (Higgins and his post-firing Van Dyke jazz beard! Nate! Roy! (Roy up to his eyeballs in a wheelie bin of ice water!)
KEELEY. I mean. Keeley. Keeley, loving who she is, helping Rebecca love herself. Finding love and grabbing hold of it. Keeley. <3 <3 <3
Even Jamie Tartt, I felt for at the end. How the fuck did this show make me have empathy for that little twerp?
I love where Season One ended: you don't have to win the big match to have a happy ending. And I'm just in time for S2 to start.
Onwards and upwards, trying to be more posty!