Sleepy Hollow, Big Bangs, Pork Chops
(or, 3 things on a Saturday)
Sleepy Hollow: That thing that happened was not cool, not just because it happened, but because of everything that led up to it.
I cannot even. I watched it and I couldn't. I read around online and I couldn't. I slept on it and I woke up angrier than I was when I went to bed.
"My job was to carry you on..." WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT. Her job was to be a witness and a BAMF and save the goddamn world time after time. Her job was to lead the team. Her job was to work out her family issues--why, when she goes to the pie diner of purgatory, does she meet up with her white father figure, who ditches her to hang out with his son, and not her mother? Or Grace?
Well, I guess we all know why. And that line, that reframing of Abbie's purpose, coupled with the idea that her soul can somehow move into another person's body (um, doesn't that sound like something the villains of this series would do?) is all there to make us nod and go, "Oh, yeah, it's okay, she's expendable." Which she is not, and nobody I know is buying that shit anyway.
And why did they spend the back half of the season building toward a romantic relationship between Abbie and Crane if they knew they were going to do this? Why did it hit Crane *after she was dead* that hey, all these people who've been telling me I love Abbie were right?", thus giving viewers something we've been assuming would happen for three years in the last 20 minutes of the episode and then taking it away? It reminds me so much, SO much, of what Person of Interest did with Joss Carter*. Seems like there's something Abbie and Joss had in common beyond being super-competent law enforcement officers who are thrust into non-standard situations with the male leads...something...some reason TPTB might think it's okay to kill them off...I mean, I'm not sure what it is but if you let me think about it for a while I'm sure I can come up with it.
*(Full disclosure: I got sucked into POI for about two weeks because I saw the Accidental Baby Acquisition ep while I was writing an ABA fic in another fandom, and I liked Joss Carter so much I went back and watched all of the episodes up to the ones currently airing. The second week I tuned into a "live" airing of POI was the one where they shoehorned in the romance and killed Carter. Never watched again.)
Nichole Perkins at Vulture sums up a lot of the arguments and issues with Abbie's death/Nicole Beharie's departure. I get that she wanted to go, but I don't think we can ignore the reasons why as part of the context that has every fan I know incensed. The only not-furious review I've read is Sarah D Bunting's at PreviouslyTV, which is more of a eulogy than a "what the hell" reaction (and the second time I read it, I had more of an, "I see what you did there..." reaction; I think she's maybe not as invested and therefore not as pissed, but she's as ready as anyone I've read to see the show cancelled).
I'm going to let the articles I linked to make most of my arguments for me, since Perkins and Bunting are better writers about this stuff than I am. But there's one connection I keep coming back to that I haven't seen yet, and I'm not 100% sure how to articulate it, but I'll give it a shot.
Okay, so. Hamilton. History told by voices that had been silenced for far too long. A modern-day POV on the Founding Fathers. Referenced by Sleepy Hollow at least once.
And I just think...I don't know, some of what appealed to me about SH at the beginning, some of what it got right, was that it also gave us a modern POV on the founding fathers, and that POV came from black characters, at least at the beginning. Before LMM and David Diggs brought him to the stage, Abbie Mills was throwing shade on Thomas Jefferson with her epic eyerolls. Hell, her snark about the Civil War in the first episode had me on her side immediately. But I felt like they lost some of that as the show went on, and by the time they referenced Hamilton, it was a fairly weak shout-out. The writers wanted to show us they knew about it, but they seem to have missed the actual point of Hamilton completely.
Kind of like how they completely missed the point of their own show.
So the icon is for the SH writers. Congrats, guys. (And I'm sure most of them are guys.) You've made the list and jumped into the top 5.
In other news--has anyone reading this ever participated in a Big Bang that didn't go quite the way you thought it would? I'm writing for two right now, and lemme tell you, Small Fandom Big Bang is GREAT. Well-moderated, things happen on time, participants know where we stand.
With Heroine Big Bang, things are iffier. I may be jumping the gun, especially since SFBB is the only other one I've ever done, and that only last year and this one, but there was supposed to be a check-in over a week ago and the mod(s?) haven't responded to posts in the community or to emails. I'm hoping that by saying something here the universe will do its usual contrarian number and a post will go up, and I really, really hope everything is okay in the lives of the mods. I don't want HBB not to work out. I love the support community; everyone's so encouraging and helpful even though we're all writing different fandoms. And I looooovvvvvvve the story idea I'm working on for this one*. Love love love. I would really like to have some art for it because damn, would the visuals be amazing, but more than that I really need the deadline to push me to get words on the page/screen.
(*The basic premise is...
...Early Edition noir AU. Post-WW II. Toni Brigatti is our intrepid detective. Gary Hobson is the...well. He's the femme fatale, basically, sent to lure Toni to her doom. I mean, he has a good reason for doing what he's doing, of course; I'm twisting the show/characters to fit the trope, but I'm also twisting the trope to fit with who the characters are at heart. There's fog and spying and danger and TRENCHCOATS and 1940s HAIR and DRESSES and SHOES and HATS and Marissa and Crumb (of course) and the Chicago Sun, because it didn't become the Sun-Times until 1947. And mostly the more I think about this the more perfect it is and I have no hope of getting the platonic ideal that's in my head translated into prose, but hopefully the less-than-ideal version will still be fun to read.)
So on this count, I'm fretty and worried rather than angry. ALLLLL my anger is for SH's writers and producers.
Finally: Pork chops.
serrico, I'm making slow cooker pork chops a lot like the ones we had at your place, though I had canned pineapple so I used that (and saved some of the pineapple/juice for upside down cake because I had eggs I needed to use up too), and I also shaved in some fresh ginger to use up a nodule of that I had sitting around. I never would have thought of this without that great meal you made, so thank you!
My house smells amazing and I'm going to have a real dinner and a glass of wine and revise my SFBB story a bit more. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
This entry was originally posted at http://akamarykate.dreamwidth.org/412438.html. You may comment either here or there.
Sleepy Hollow: That thing that happened was not cool, not just because it happened, but because of everything that led up to it.
I cannot even. I watched it and I couldn't. I read around online and I couldn't. I slept on it and I woke up angrier than I was when I went to bed.
"My job was to carry you on..." WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT. Her job was to be a witness and a BAMF and save the goddamn world time after time. Her job was to lead the team. Her job was to work out her family issues--why, when she goes to the pie diner of purgatory, does she meet up with her white father figure, who ditches her to hang out with his son, and not her mother? Or Grace?
Well, I guess we all know why. And that line, that reframing of Abbie's purpose, coupled with the idea that her soul can somehow move into another person's body (um, doesn't that sound like something the villains of this series would do?) is all there to make us nod and go, "Oh, yeah, it's okay, she's expendable." Which she is not, and nobody I know is buying that shit anyway.
And why did they spend the back half of the season building toward a romantic relationship between Abbie and Crane if they knew they were going to do this? Why did it hit Crane *after she was dead* that hey, all these people who've been telling me I love Abbie were right?", thus giving viewers something we've been assuming would happen for three years in the last 20 minutes of the episode and then taking it away? It reminds me so much, SO much, of what Person of Interest did with Joss Carter*. Seems like there's something Abbie and Joss had in common beyond being super-competent law enforcement officers who are thrust into non-standard situations with the male leads...something...some reason TPTB might think it's okay to kill them off...I mean, I'm not sure what it is but if you let me think about it for a while I'm sure I can come up with it.
*(Full disclosure: I got sucked into POI for about two weeks because I saw the Accidental Baby Acquisition ep while I was writing an ABA fic in another fandom, and I liked Joss Carter so much I went back and watched all of the episodes up to the ones currently airing. The second week I tuned into a "live" airing of POI was the one where they shoehorned in the romance and killed Carter. Never watched again.)
Nichole Perkins at Vulture sums up a lot of the arguments and issues with Abbie's death/Nicole Beharie's departure. I get that she wanted to go, but I don't think we can ignore the reasons why as part of the context that has every fan I know incensed. The only not-furious review I've read is Sarah D Bunting's at PreviouslyTV, which is more of a eulogy than a "what the hell" reaction (and the second time I read it, I had more of an, "I see what you did there..." reaction; I think she's maybe not as invested and therefore not as pissed, but she's as ready as anyone I've read to see the show cancelled).
I'm going to let the articles I linked to make most of my arguments for me, since Perkins and Bunting are better writers about this stuff than I am. But there's one connection I keep coming back to that I haven't seen yet, and I'm not 100% sure how to articulate it, but I'll give it a shot.
Okay, so. Hamilton. History told by voices that had been silenced for far too long. A modern-day POV on the Founding Fathers. Referenced by Sleepy Hollow at least once.
And I just think...I don't know, some of what appealed to me about SH at the beginning, some of what it got right, was that it also gave us a modern POV on the founding fathers, and that POV came from black characters, at least at the beginning. Before LMM and David Diggs brought him to the stage, Abbie Mills was throwing shade on Thomas Jefferson with her epic eyerolls. Hell, her snark about the Civil War in the first episode had me on her side immediately. But I felt like they lost some of that as the show went on, and by the time they referenced Hamilton, it was a fairly weak shout-out. The writers wanted to show us they knew about it, but they seem to have missed the actual point of Hamilton completely.
Kind of like how they completely missed the point of their own show.
So the icon is for the SH writers. Congrats, guys. (And I'm sure most of them are guys.) You've made the list and jumped into the top 5.
In other news--has anyone reading this ever participated in a Big Bang that didn't go quite the way you thought it would? I'm writing for two right now, and lemme tell you, Small Fandom Big Bang is GREAT. Well-moderated, things happen on time, participants know where we stand.
With Heroine Big Bang, things are iffier. I may be jumping the gun, especially since SFBB is the only other one I've ever done, and that only last year and this one, but there was supposed to be a check-in over a week ago and the mod(s?) haven't responded to posts in the community or to emails. I'm hoping that by saying something here the universe will do its usual contrarian number and a post will go up, and I really, really hope everything is okay in the lives of the mods. I don't want HBB not to work out. I love the support community; everyone's so encouraging and helpful even though we're all writing different fandoms. And I looooovvvvvvve the story idea I'm working on for this one*. Love love love. I would really like to have some art for it because damn, would the visuals be amazing, but more than that I really need the deadline to push me to get words on the page/screen.
(*The basic premise is...
...Early Edition noir AU. Post-WW II. Toni Brigatti is our intrepid detective. Gary Hobson is the...well. He's the femme fatale, basically, sent to lure Toni to her doom. I mean, he has a good reason for doing what he's doing, of course; I'm twisting the show/characters to fit the trope, but I'm also twisting the trope to fit with who the characters are at heart. There's fog and spying and danger and TRENCHCOATS and 1940s HAIR and DRESSES and SHOES and HATS and Marissa and Crumb (of course) and the Chicago Sun, because it didn't become the Sun-Times until 1947. And mostly the more I think about this the more perfect it is and I have no hope of getting the platonic ideal that's in my head translated into prose, but hopefully the less-than-ideal version will still be fun to read.)
So on this count, I'm fretty and worried rather than angry. ALLLLL my anger is for SH's writers and producers.
Finally: Pork chops.
serrico, I'm making slow cooker pork chops a lot like the ones we had at your place, though I had canned pineapple so I used that (and saved some of the pineapple/juice for upside down cake because I had eggs I needed to use up too), and I also shaved in some fresh ginger to use up a nodule of that I had sitting around. I never would have thought of this without that great meal you made, so thank you!
My house smells amazing and I'm going to have a real dinner and a glass of wine and revise my SFBB story a bit more. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
This entry was originally posted at http://akamarykate.dreamwidth.org/412438.html. You may comment either here or there.