I was wrong
Jan. 3rd, 2023 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadness Anna Karenina Isn’t Dead doesn't pay badly. It pays well. Move your ass Dana, Move. Your. Ass. (beta readers anyone?)
So today was me working on lectures and submitting stories so let me just dive into today's challenge
Challenge #2
In your own space, write a promo, manifesto or primer for your fave character, ship or fandom. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
I can't express how much I loved this show. Yes it's a crime drama but there were things that truly set it apart. What Fox did to them was just raw and wrong. Covid got in the way and they did zero advertising it in 2021 for S2. Trust me on this. I was hospitalized for almost 3 months with no dvr and had to watch ads. Fox did NOTHING. It's like they wanted to cancel it.
Let's break down what made it different. For one we had high caliber acting (Michael Sheen, Tom Payne, Bellamy Young, Lou Diamond Phillips to name a few) with chemistry you see too rarely. Yes it had the crime of the week format but I prefer that to one crime one season thing (those always drag and turn into soap operas) and yes it drew from Silence of the Lamb with talking to the serial killer thing. However it was serial killer - criminal profiler AND father-son relationship in one big ball of trauma.
And that leads me to the how they handled the mental health issues. Way too many shows use mental health problems as comic fodder or as a way to denigrate a character. Malcolm Bright has complex PTSD, anxiety, and several other issues. We see him taking his meds. We see him getting therapy. We see his friends and family SUPPORTING him. I have never seen mental health done so well on a show especially a cop show. Usually we see cops acting like psychiatrists are the enemy and you're weak if you have issues.
And another more important thing to me was that we have three major male characters, Malcolm, Gil and JT and NOT ONE had toxic male attributes. Imagine that. Men who were masculine without toxicity? You almost never see it and that was so refreshing. I miss this show.
All the stories held found family moments, humor, real family moments, trauma interesting crimes, and to lose the show hit hard.
My two favorite characters hands down, Malcolm Bright, the boy who turned in his serial killer father at age ten and becomes a criminal profiler down the road and Gil Arroyo, the man who arrested the serial killer and became Malcolm's boss down the road and more importantly his surrogate father. Their found family father-son relationship is everything.
But really all the characters were fantastic and there were strong female characters galore.
I've already mention Malcolm Bright above and he's just the latest in a long line of boys with trauma being in my fave list.
From my newest fandom The Owl House, there's Hunter. He starts off as the enemy but the more we get to know him, his life is actually quite tragic and he grows into someone the heroes can trust. I don't want to say too much about all of this because it's so spoilery but for a kid's cartoon (from Disney) it is a really well done, thought out plot with a lot of LGBT and diverse rep. (Luz, the lead is a bisexual Dominican girl, Amity is her girlfriend, the creator has Lilith, one of the witches as ACE and Raine is nonbinary using They/Them pronouns) and sadly just like Prodigal Son got canceled after two years. sigh.
And then we had from Angel the series, Connor, a character most hated at the time because a) he hated Angel b) Whedon was SO set on punishing Charisma Carpenter, he ruined Connor's storyline to do it. They could have really done something interesting with Connor. THe son of two vampires, torn away from his family and raised in a hell dimension by his father's enemy, taught to hate him for 18 years and sent back to Angel. They could have done a lot with that, illustrate how hate and prejudiced when exposed to it your whole life isn't easy to be set aside but with work it can be done (not overnight which is what way too many of the fandom wanted).
Instead of exploring that Whedon wrote story lines to turn Connor and Cordy into villains, had the heroes do nonsensical shit and all but ruin the storyline (because he was angry Charisma got pregnant if she's to be believed and I do believe her). I look at this character and I see the potential and what should have been. And what ifs are what fandom is all about.
So today was me working on lectures and submitting stories so let me just dive into today's challenge
Challenge #2
In your own space, write a promo, manifesto or primer for your fave character, ship or fandom. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
I can't express how much I loved this show. Yes it's a crime drama but there were things that truly set it apart. What Fox did to them was just raw and wrong. Covid got in the way and they did zero advertising it in 2021 for S2. Trust me on this. I was hospitalized for almost 3 months with no dvr and had to watch ads. Fox did NOTHING. It's like they wanted to cancel it.
Let's break down what made it different. For one we had high caliber acting (Michael Sheen, Tom Payne, Bellamy Young, Lou Diamond Phillips to name a few) with chemistry you see too rarely. Yes it had the crime of the week format but I prefer that to one crime one season thing (those always drag and turn into soap operas) and yes it drew from Silence of the Lamb with talking to the serial killer thing. However it was serial killer - criminal profiler AND father-son relationship in one big ball of trauma.
And that leads me to the how they handled the mental health issues. Way too many shows use mental health problems as comic fodder or as a way to denigrate a character. Malcolm Bright has complex PTSD, anxiety, and several other issues. We see him taking his meds. We see him getting therapy. We see his friends and family SUPPORTING him. I have never seen mental health done so well on a show especially a cop show. Usually we see cops acting like psychiatrists are the enemy and you're weak if you have issues.
And another more important thing to me was that we have three major male characters, Malcolm, Gil and JT and NOT ONE had toxic male attributes. Imagine that. Men who were masculine without toxicity? You almost never see it and that was so refreshing. I miss this show.
All the stories held found family moments, humor, real family moments, trauma interesting crimes, and to lose the show hit hard.
My two favorite characters hands down, Malcolm Bright, the boy who turned in his serial killer father at age ten and becomes a criminal profiler down the road and Gil Arroyo, the man who arrested the serial killer and became Malcolm's boss down the road and more importantly his surrogate father. Their found family father-son relationship is everything.
But really all the characters were fantastic and there were strong female characters galore.
I've already mention Malcolm Bright above and he's just the latest in a long line of boys with trauma being in my fave list.
From my newest fandom The Owl House, there's Hunter. He starts off as the enemy but the more we get to know him, his life is actually quite tragic and he grows into someone the heroes can trust. I don't want to say too much about all of this because it's so spoilery but for a kid's cartoon (from Disney) it is a really well done, thought out plot with a lot of LGBT and diverse rep. (Luz, the lead is a bisexual Dominican girl, Amity is her girlfriend, the creator has Lilith, one of the witches as ACE and Raine is nonbinary using They/Them pronouns) and sadly just like Prodigal Son got canceled after two years. sigh.
And then we had from Angel the series, Connor, a character most hated at the time because a) he hated Angel b) Whedon was SO set on punishing Charisma Carpenter, he ruined Connor's storyline to do it. They could have really done something interesting with Connor. THe son of two vampires, torn away from his family and raised in a hell dimension by his father's enemy, taught to hate him for 18 years and sent back to Angel. They could have done a lot with that, illustrate how hate and prejudiced when exposed to it your whole life isn't easy to be set aside but with work it can be done (not overnight which is what way too many of the fandom wanted).
Instead of exploring that Whedon wrote story lines to turn Connor and Cordy into villains, had the heroes do nonsensical shit and all but ruin the storyline (because he was angry Charisma got pregnant if she's to be believed and I do believe her). I look at this character and I see the potential and what should have been. And what ifs are what fandom is all about.
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no subject
Date: 2023-01-04 03:02 am (UTC)And speaking of not having a chance... poor Connor! They did him wrong.
Thanks for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2023-01-04 03:14 am (UTC)Yeah Connor didn't have a chance. (And boy liking him back in the day was fandom suicide)
no subject
Date: 2023-01-04 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-04 03:32 am (UTC)It was a shame that instead of just using angles to disguise her pregnancy or send Cordy to Sunnydale for a few months to let Charisma have time off to be a mother, he went with being punishing and ruining almost all the characters really
no subject
Date: 2023-01-04 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-04 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-04 10:08 pm (UTC)Connor was one of my favorite Angel characters and they just let what could be an incredible opportunity slip away because Whedon was being petty.
no subject
Date: 2023-01-04 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-05 01:22 am (UTC)Warner Brothers is going the same way
no subject
Date: 2023-01-05 01:26 am (UTC)And wow, another Connor fan. I don't run across too many. They did waste such potential on Whedon's revenge. Sigh.