Monday, November 23, 2020

Hurt, No Comfort: The End of Supernatural

--This post originally appeared on my Tumblr. I am mostly posting it here so I can find it easily, since  no matter how carefully I tag things over there, they tend to disappear into the ether. But feel free to engage with it if you'd like. Heads up that the tone of this post is quite different from my usual here, and there is cursing. A lot of cursing.-- 


(Spoilers ahead for Supernatural, especially the series finale. NSFW for language. The only link, despite what the surrounding text may lead you to believe, *is* SFW.)

So last night my brain said, “You know what would be fun? Instead of sleeping and resetting and starting to heal from the deep hurt that was 15x20? Planning, in excruciating detail, an essay about *why* it hurt so fucking much.” So that’s what I did all night. And I guess now I’m gonna write it down.

First, because I will never not be a Hufflepuff (oh, hi, other property that has been hurtful, how are *you* this morning?) and I will never be able to just piss all over something without feeling guilty as sin for, like, maybe hurting someone else, I have to acknowledge how much Supernatural has meant to me and how deeply grateful I am to everyone involved in making the show for *making* the show FOR FIFTEEN YEARS. Good lordt. Bless. And I recognize that endings are hard (truly) and that ending this show, which ran for 327 episodes and reinvented itself wholly at least twice and has at least two separate kinds of fans who expected and wanted different things from it, was always going to be hard. I recognize the hard work of the actors and sincerely thank them for putting their hearts and souls into this show and especially for leaving their families during a pandemic, quarantining, and making those last two episodes after such an incredibly long hiatus. I recognize all the hard work of the crew and all the people who made the show happen week after week after week and also went back to work under conditions that were probably not great.

Okay? Love.

Now. Hurt.

 

Seriously, Where Is Cas?

Misha Collins was on SPN for longer (by far) than anyone else except Jensen and Jared. Even Bobby, who is such a beloved and quintessential part of the show, was in fewer than half as many episodes as Cas. From the moment he first appeared until the end of the run, Cas was in more than half of the total episodes made (148, by the way, or the equivalent of more than every episode of a typical six-season run for an American show on a broadcast network). For him to be so utterly absent from the last two episodes not only felt wrong but like an erasure of all that he meant to the show and to so many of the fans. Even if there was no way to bring him back from the dead after 15x18, the almost complete ignoring of his character felt like a slap in the face. Add to that the way that he died? “I’m queer, I love you, poof”? Just. OUCH, guys. And not in a sad but entertaining or somehow cathartic way. Just full on fucking ow. That *hurt*. I LOVED Cas’s speech. His affirmation of his own truth? His recognition that his happiness was in his own self-actualization and that the reactions of others cannot touch that? Fucking beautiful. But then he died. And he didn’t come back, like he has so many times before, so many times when he *hadn’t* just come out as queer. No resurrection. No resolution. Not even a fucking recognition of the heart of that scene from any other character in a further 82 minutes of television. That was harmful. I lived in hope for two weeks that they were going to save this beautiful moment from being an epic shift from queerbaiting into bury your guys, and well. “Hope is the thing with feathers,” y’all.

 

Good God, Guys, Resolve This Chord, Wouldja?

 I just… don’t understand how they could do the end of 15x18 and then not go anywhere further with it? That scene begs, *begs* for narrative resolution. Cas drops three, count ’em, three bombs on Dean—Bang! You, of all the humans, are the most loving and the most deserving of being saved. Bang! Anything I have ever loved, any capacity for love I have, I have because of *you*, and I *love* you. Bang! Telling you this means I’m going die. Right now.—and Dean does not get to respond. He wants to, but he’s interrupted by Cas shoving him out of the way of the Empty coming to take him. And the scene ends with Dean sobbing on the floor, ignoring a phone call from his brother in the middle of an almost-certainly world-ending catastrophe. And then we get nothing more. Dean never tells anyone what Cas said. He never gets to see Cas again. He never prays to Cas as some kind of last-ditch effort to speak his truth back, whatever that may be. We’re just left with what amounts to one half of a scene and a narrative wound and an open character arc that never sees any resolution. I wanted reciprocation. I was prepared not to get it. (I’ve seen this show before.) I was not prepared for them to just drop the biggest unresolved emotional question of the season show. May whoever was ultimately responsible for this never hear a chord progression resolve for the rest of their days.

 

They Done Dean Dirty

We all do this with narratives we love, right? Latch on to one of the characters more than others? Because we see something of ourselves in them? Because we go, “Hey, babe, I see you struggling with that shit. Me, too, love, me, too.” I love Lizzie, but I relate to Darcy. Don’t come for him, I will cut you. Harry is cool and all and Ron is fun, but Hermione is mine. When she’s confronted with her worst fear—failure—I’m there with her. I love Sam and, god, I love Cas, and Charlie and Jody will always be in my heart, but Dean. Dean is me, man. His struggle to see the good in himself, not just the bad? His work to bring forward the parts of himself that matter to him, not just those he’s been told are what make him up? His nurturing nature and his unhealthy tendency to put everyone else before himself? His dumb, chaotic, allusion-laced sense of humor? His propensity to just keep going, bottling up the big feelings until they burst out of him in a way he can’t really control and that gets him into trouble with the people he loves? His sexuality—definitely one thing and maybe, probably, something else too? All of that. That’s me. 

And Dean is dead. Hey, cool, he’s human. Humans die. I don’t actually mind that Dean is dead. The *way* that he died? And when? It’s sitting in my stomach like a hunk of lead.

All Dean ever wanted was to be free. Free of destiny, free of Chuck, free to be who he wanted to be. And he got it. For a hot second. I guess.

Here’s what happened to Dean in 15x20:

He got hit in the face with a pie and stabbed in the back.

Or, alternatively:

He was silenced from speaking his truth in 15x18 and that silence was continually perpetuated on him by first, a problem deemed more important than his emotional well-being (Chuck) and second, some random life-draining (vampiric) monsters who silence people (by cutting out their tongues). Then he died after being penetrated by a phallus.

Or, alternatively:

After championing free will for twelve years, defying angels, God, and destiny, his story ended in exactly the way he feared would always be his destiny: in a violent, early death.

Good job trying to better yourself, Dean! Well done with all that character growth! You’ve finally done it! Your reward? Death. A largely pointless, ignoble death. And what will your last words be? Will they be about the truth you’ve worked so hard to get to? Heck, no. Regress back to your twenties. Think only about others. Your whole life was just the setup for someone else. And you know what? While you’re at it? Definitely don’t give yourself permission to find peace. Wait till someone else tells you they’ll be okay if you go. Oh! And also? Don’t forget that your death is coming right on the heels of the first time anyone has ever told you that they love you, like from their soul to yours, love. you. And that person sacrificed themselves for you. For nothing. Cause you’re dying a few weeks later anyway.

Remember how I said Dean was me? How all his struggles and his character growth meant so much to me? I’m feeling *super* good about myself right now, guys. SUPER good.

 

How Did You Miss the Last Fourteen Years of Your Own Show?

SPN started out being about family. And it never stopped. But the thing is, they immediately started complicating what family is and what it means. In episode one, it was two brothers. Then it was two brothers and their dad. Then two brothers and their other dad. Two brothers, their other dad, a scrappy little sister, and surrogate mom. Two brothers, their other dad, a scrappy little sister, a surrogate mom, and their weird angel friend. Two brothers, their weird angel friend and their other surrogate mom. Two brothers, their weird angel friend, their other surrogate mom and her good friend. Two brothers, their best angel friend, their other surrogate mom, her good friend, and the brothers’ little sister they never wanted. Do I have to keep going right up to two brothers, their best angel friend who is in love with one of them, and his son? This show stopped defining family as “two brothers” eight thousand iterations ago. Family don’t end with blood. Someone said that once. On the show. So why the fuck would anyone think a good end to the show was an end that reverted back to “two brothers”? It hasn’t been that since season one.

For the finale to be about nobody but Sam and Dean and to practically belligerently insist that no one else ever mattered to them was not only weird, but it felt like a giant fuck you to anyone who’s been watching this show since… ever? Sam gives Dean a hunter’s funeral alone? (Insert my obligatory nod to the difficulties with this scene due to the pandemic here, but.) No Jody? No Donna? No Claire? No Garth? None of the other hunters to whom Dean is famous? NO EILEEN? Dean gets to Heaven, and Bobby (okay, I love that Bobby was there, but Bobby has been dead for eight years. For him to be the only other long-time character from the show to be in this episode was strange.) namedrops Jack and motherloving Cas? I’m to understand that Jack resurrected Cas from the Empty *off-screen* and Cas neither saved Dean from the fucking nail in the goddamn barn wall (since when is Cas hands off? Especially with Dean?) and COULD NOT BE ARSED TO MEET DEAN IN HEAVEN? What the actual hell is happening here?

And Bobby tells Dean he can do whatever he wants (in a moment, by the way, that strongly suggests Bobby, at least, knows what’s up with Cas—I was *sure*, for a glimmering couple of seconds, that we were going to get a brief reunion with Cas after that moment, but alas. Ear wax.), and he goes for a drive? In his car. The car he’s had for fifteen+ years? That he’s been able to drive around, nay that he has done virtually nothing but drive around, for that same period of time? He is finally free of everything, he’s finally at peace, he’s in Heaven with all the people he’s ever loved who have died (which is a long list: John, Mary, Ellen, Jo, Kevin, Charlie), and his best friend the angel, who *just* told him he loves him, is kicking around somewhere, and he decides to GO FOR A DRIVE. Until Sam dies decades later. That’s it. That’s all we see him do. All of Heaven before him, a chance to do what he wants, to make his own decisions, to have a (n after) life, and he cares about nothing but his little brother and his car. “i’M tWEnTy-sIx, SaM.” Jeebus.

 

This Story Didn’t Need to Be Told

Not only did this episode not deliver on the promises of the season (Cas and Dean’s relationship, however you read it, was all over this season, and we got no resolution; the whole season seemed to promise an end “outside” of the writer (Chuck), and we for sure did not get that), it also told us virtually nothing new. We learned that Jack “fixed” Heaven and (apparently) that Cas is no longer in the Empty. We got that in one line of dialogue in the last few minutes of the episode. Everything else was old news. 15x19 (and honestly the whole season) raised the question of what Sam and Dean would do if they were free of the machinations of a capricious God/writer. Did we get an answer to that?

Only if the answer is “exactly what they would do if they weren’t free.” Sam goes jogging. We’ve seen that before. Dean cooks. We’ve seen that before. Dean likes pie. We’ve seen that before. They go on a hunt. We’ve seen that before. Dean goes for a drive and listens to classic rock. We’ve seen that before. Dean dies. We’ve seen that before. Dean is proud of Sam. WE’VE SEEN THAT BEFORE.

We have seen all of this before. We did not learn anything about the boys we didn’t already know. We didn’t see them make any choices. We didn’t see them experience any things, people, or feelings differently than we’ve seen them experience them before. Did Sam go find Eileen, the one woman who has really seemed to make him happy since Jess? Nope. Did Dean do anything at all with his feelings about Cas, the feelings he was sobbing into his hands over? Nope. Did they quit hunting? Nope. Did they go sit on the beach and drink beers? Nope. Did they get jobs? Go back to school? Join the FBI for real? Nope nope nope. Did they go out together in a blaze of glory, somehow for once dying at the same time? Nope. Did Dean say anything surprising to Sam while he was dying? Nope.

I don’t know what the point of it was. First episode: here’s two brothers with an extraordinary bond who do dangerous, heroic shit and are likely to die doing it. Last episode: here’s two brothers with an extraordinary bond who do dangerous, heroic shit and are likely to die doing it. And guess what! One of them did! For no reason! And after gay love was declared to him! And before we could resolve his character arc despite knowing for a year that we had to wrap up! And just in time to confirm (not that anything had ever thrown this in doubt) that the brothers would be together when they both got to Heaven! Oh, and hey, when they get there, they aren’t going to care about *anyone* else, not their friends, not their parents, not their significant others. Because we’re erasing the last fourteen years of our own hard-won character growth. FIGJAM.

 

And Parts of It Were Just Cruel

Some pieces of those last two episodes were just cruel. Bullet points, because I’m tired of this shit and I think I’ve finally written myself to some catharsis about this cluster.

*Lucifer calls Dean and pretends to be Cas. This is the last time we hear Cas’s voice on the show. Insult to injury: Dean runs to the door to let in “Cas” like we have never seen him run before, like he’s desperate to see his friend. Who is dead. Because he loves Dean. Runs like he needs to tell him something. Which he never does. Salt in the wound: Lucifer has a long history on the show of pretending to be men’s dead lovers so that they will “let him in.” Cool, guys. It’s fine.

*Miracle. They found a dog that Dean called a miracle. And it was the only glimmer of hope in an empty, hopeless world. And Chuck poofed it away. Then the dog was back in the finale. It was clearly Dean’s dog. Dean doesn’t like dogs. Because he was dragged to Hell by Hell hounds. But now he’s found one he loves and snuggles with in bed and buries his nose in its fur. He went and found the dog, but not Cas. Not Cas, who pulled *him* out of Hell, just like we thought (because the parallelism omg) Dean was gonna pull Cas out of the Empty. But no. Dog. And then Dean died. So. Sad dog. No, guys, really, it’s cool. Juuuust fine.

*Pie. It’s been a long-running bit that Dean often doesn’t get to eat his pie, especially if Sam is involved. Because Dean associates pie with love and home and not having to be the adult and not always being in danger. And we can’t have that. But anyway, they go to a pie fest, an actual honest to god pie. fest. and Dean gets like a half dozen slices of pie, and Sam smacks him in the face with one of them. And that’s the last pie Dean ever sees before he dies. Haaahahaha*sobs*. Totally fine.

*Dean handwaves Cas’s death. Sam brings him up because he misses him. Dean says that they have to live and honor his sacrifice. Okaaay? Except we’ve seen Cas die a lot before and it has *always* turned Dean into a barely functional, alcoholic wreck. But this time: pie. Oh. Also? Good luck living to honor Cas’s sacrifice, Dean. You’re gonna die. Cool, cooool.

*Barn. Dean dies in a barn. Dean first met Cas in a barn. Look, there’s gonna be parallelism! It’s gonna be okay… oh. Right. This is fine.

*Jenny. Oh, heeeey, this whole episode has forgotten that Sam and Dean ever knew *anyone* except Bobby, but look, a random human-turned-vampire from that one episode in season one! Yay?

*Cas is alive (apparently) but we don’t see him. Or even hear him. Not even a tiny “Hello, Dean” off-screen while Dean is in Heaven. Nada. Zilch. No, I’m good, I love unresolved arcs. Makes me all nice and twitchy.

*Sam’s montage. Sam gets to “live his life,” but he is never happy. He looks miserable the whole time. And we have no idea what he does. Or who he married. Or why his kid has an anti-possession tattoo. Family business? Just for funsies? A safety precaution only? The world may never know.

 

It Could Have Been Salvaged… Easily

This was never going to be the episode I wanted, and that’s okay (ish). People have different visions for things. If this was the episode we were going to get, it was always going to disappoint me, but it didn’t have to hurt. Fix this very episode by:

*Removing the admittedly fun but not super interesting opening montage and replacing it with some real indication of what *choices* the boys have made about their lives. Make it clear that they got to live their lives for some amount of time so that when Dean dies later it doesn’t feel like Cas’s sacrifice is meaningless now.

*Letting Dean tell Sam what Cas said to him and showing that Dean took it all to heart and was shook by the moment. (Alternatively, if you want to keep that moment between Dean and Cas, which would be a nice touch, let Dean talk to Cas in his absence. Like a prayer, as we’ve seen him do countless times before.) Show him grieving (this can be healthier grieving than he’d done in the past—that would be great! But show it.)

*Giving Dean’s death a little more weight in the moment. It doesn’t have to be something super grand, but just. Not this shitty falling against rebar in the wall like he’s some no-name extra in a cold open.

*Making it clear that Sam married Eileen in his montage. He could communicate through sign language with his son, maybe, since they would almost certainly teach any of their kids ASL whether they were Deaf or HOH or not. Remove that glaring, awful “Dean” from the kid’s overalls, jeez. There’s dialogue in Sam’s last moments. He can call his son “Dean.” We’ll get it, promise. It’s not like naming your kid after relatives you admired is a super uncommon thing or something. Let Sam be happy in that montage at some point, Christ. (ESPECIALLY since we. have. seen. this. before. We have seen a montage of Dean after Sam died (6x1). That was arguably a way worse situation (Dean thought Sam was locked in Hell with Lucifer; Sam has no reason in 15x20 not to think Dean went to Heaven), Dean only had a year to deal, and while he was not *good*, he never looked as despondent as Sam did throughout a montage that covered decades.)

*Intersperse Sam’s montage with Dean in Heaven reuniting with Cas. Ideally this would cut into a small moment with some dialogue, but some unambiguous physical affection would have worked too. A reunion hug like we’ve seen before. Dean pulls back and looks into Cas’s eyes. Then he buries his head in Cas’s neck for a second like he did to the GD dog. Then Dean starts back toward Baby, reaching his hand out for Cas to take. They walk toward the car holding hands.

These changes would take up virtually no extra time, would require only one more cast member (Misha), and while they would have still not made a lot of us happy, Christ on a flatbread, would it have been better.

 

Right, That’s Lunch

Okay, that’s me, kidlets.

If you were happy with the episode, yay! Seriously, I would not wish what I am feeling on anyone.

If it disappointed you, boo. AO3 is thattaway.

If it *hurt*, I am so, so sorry. I am there with you. You are not alone.

Remember:

I see what you see.

Your kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.

Don’t tag creatives in your crit of their work.

Don’t put no beans up your nose.

We’ve been through much together.

Carry on.

 

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Fear of Losing Favorite TV


Probably the original Star Trek series was the first time I fell in love with a TV show in the same way that I was already accustomed, at eleven, to fall in love with books—with my whole entire self in such a fashion that the show and my love for it became a part of who I was. It was also my first encounter with a difficulty that swirls around this kind of love for television that is usually absent from the same powerful feelings toward a particular book. When I love a book this way—when I clutch it to my chest when I’m done reading it, when it stays with me always, when it is in some way me—I get a copy of it to keep forever. Maybe it’s a particularly nice copy and maybe it isn’t, but I have a physical copy that I can set on a shelf and be pretty sure, barring some manner of house-destroying catastrophe, that it will be accessible to me forever. If I need to read Harry’s decision to enter the Forbidden Forest again, I can. If I need to watch David and Alan take on Hoseason’s crew from the captain’s cabin, no problem. If I need to hear Jane tell Rochester that she’s no bird, I have but to take the book down from its place on the shelf and crack it open. And the thing is, getting that book in the first place, with rare exception, is easy. If I have ten or twenty bucks, I can get the thing and have it forever.

Rewatching my favorite moments between Kirk and Spock was a lot harder in 1992, when my only real access to them was through the reruns our local PBS affiliate ran on Saturday nights. I recorded them on VHS—a somewhat cumbersome and anxiety inducing process (what if I set up the recording wrong?!)—but even so I was restricted by which episodes the station chose to air. And keeping those recordings for later viewing was kind of a nightmare. If I recorded them on a slow speed to get as many episodes as possible on one tape, the recording quality was crap and would deteriorate fairly quickly. Record at a faster speed and only two episodes would fit on a tape. Even a show with a pretty short run like TOS still would run to forty VHS tapes to keep all of them. Not exactly tenable, especially if one likes *gasp* more than one TV show enough to want to be able to see it again, just as one likes to read favorite books again.

All this is much easier now, of course. Blu rays take up much less space than VHS tapes, and streaming means that you can “have” a whole show without it taking up any of your space at all. But here’s the thing—that all feels so very, very impermanent. Shows disappear from streaming services all the time, when the copyright agreements between the distributor and the service run out. And a blu ray can break or get scratched or degrade. Or… someday, owning a blu ray player will probably be like owning a VHS player is now—increasingly uncommon and eventually, probably, impossible. Those VHS copies of TOS I recorded nearly thirty years ago are pretty much worthless now. I don’t know how I would watch them, and they are probably nearly unwatchable anyway, having sat around losing little bits of data for decades. But the copy of The Hobbit my dad read to me when I was six is just as readable and just as lovely now as it was then.

It’s too bad, I guess, that we can’t really pass beloved visual media down like we can books, but what really puts a shiver down my spine is the thought of truly losing the ability to re-experience these texts that mean just as much to me as my favorite books do. I feel like so many of them are largely considered ephemeral and of the moment, while to me they are anything but ephemeral. I’m two-thirds of the way through watching Supernatural for the first time, and I know that this is one of my texts now. I’ve fallen so deeply in love with it that it is part of me, just as Jane Eyre, and Kidnapped, and Harry Potter are. I’m watching it on Netflix, but I also bought the blu rays. I’m not trusting that the show will be there ten years from now when I need to revisit it. But are those blu rays any better? Will they work in ten years? If I drop my copy of Jane Eyre in the bath, I’m always going to be able to go get another one. If blu rays don’t exist anymore when I’m sixty, will Warner Brothers have bothered to distribute SPN in whatever way is ubiquitous then? I shudder to think.

What TV shows mean as much to you as your favorite books? Which would you be devasted to no longer be able to watch?

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

The Best of 2019


Despite my sense that 2019 was just… fine as far as reading (and much else) went, I certainly encountered some things that were worlds better than fine. Here are the books and TV shows that really curled my papers last year.


Supernatural (CW for gore, TV scariness, and religious figures as characters) 

This is the big one, spacerats. Despite the fact that it will certainly be well into (maybe even all the way to the end of) 2020 before I *finish* the show (327 episodes. 327. Whut.), 2019 will always be the year of Supernatural for me because it is the year I fell down that particular rabbit hole. A good friend and former roommate introduced me to the show waaaay back in 2006, we watched the entire first season in, like, two days, and then I was afraid of the dark in the apartment where I lived alone for the next four years and wouldn’t touch the show from that point on. *Until* an internet acquaintance started watching it from the beginning for the first time and suggested that she thought I would like it. I gave it another go, found myself intrigued and *much* less scared by it, and here we are. Nine months later, I am halfway through season ten (which means I have the entirety of a decently long-running TV show’s worth left to watch. Fifteen seasons. Fifteen. Whut.), there’s SPN paraphernalia all over my office, and that internet acquaintance is a dear friend with whom I discuss every episode. I would love this show without the buddy watch component (the mythology! the exploration of good and evil! the Impala! the music! the family dynamics! the meta episodes! Misha Collins’s blue, blue eyes! DEAN WINCHESTER.), but finding a new friend and clicking with her in that way that is just so rare after your twenties was the highlight of 2019 for me. If you are among the handful of people who have had to listen to me talk about this show ad nauseum this past year, I do apologize. Sort of.



I first heard about the Phoebe and Her Unicorn comic when it was mentioned in passing on a podcast I listen to. And then this past summer Barnes and Noble had a huge display of the collections set up in the store, so I decided to give the first one a go. And I loved it to sparkly little bits. The premise is that Phoebe meets a unicorn and saves her from staring ceaselessly at her own reflection. As a reward, the unicorn offers Phoebe a wish, and Phoebe wishes for the unicorn to be her friend. And then the two have all kinds of adventures together. If you’re thinking along the lines of Calvin and Hobbes, you are on the right track, though Phoebe and Marigold Heavenly Nostrils are all their own thing and an absolute hilarious delight.



This past year saw the release of the third season of The Crown, the Netflix show following Queen Elizabeth II’s time on the throne, and I’ve been watching it right along. So the show certainly wasn’t new to me this year, but this season was so good that it almost felt like a new discovery. I was wary about the cast change (though of course it was, or at least soon would have been, necessary given the ageing of the characters portrayed), but the new cast is just as stunningly brilliant as the first was. I’m already looking forward to season four with great anticipation.



I read the first in the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny in 2018 and liked it all right. I read the whole thing (always a sign that I enjoyed a book at least on some level), but I wasn’t really grabbed by the world or the characters. I was reading the book on the suggestion of a good friend (a different good friend than either of those mentioned above—ain’t I lucky?) who was deep into the series and would like to discuss them with me, so I committed to trying at least the second book. And the second book hooked me! I settled into Three Pines, started really falling in love with Gamache, and found myself wanting to return to the world Penny had created when I had finished book two. I suspect this will mark the beginning of a long relationship with this series for me, along with many book discussions with my friend, which are always a treat.



Baby Yoda. Do I have to say more? But seriously, Husbeast and I just loved loved loved the first season of this show. The half-hour installments are just the right amount of Star Wars in a go, and the stories are intriguing. And then there’s Mando, who I instantly fell in love with, and who is played by Pedro Pascal impeccably and with nuance from behind a helmet. Can’t wait for more of this.


Black Sails (CW for violence and rape)

Black Sails takes a few of the characters from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and tosses them together with some historical pirates and puts them in a specific historical time frame and then sits back to watch as the yards get armed. It is a gloriousness of tall ships and the sea and plotting and a fripping incredible soundtrack. (Go watch/listen to the opening credits. Why still here? Go!) Best of all, perhaps, (I am about to *seriously* spoil the experience of the whole show, so DO NOT proceed if you are planning on watching) is a reveal in season two. If you are like me, you have experienced many a TV show over the years where you are *sure*, based on their behavior, the way scenes are played, how they look at other characters, and how other characters talk about them, that a character is gay or bi, only to sit through season upon season with that element of the show either never coming to fruition or suddenly erased. Sometimes referred to as queerbaiting, this is a tactic that another show in this post is super* guilty of. But on Black Sails, after a season and a bit worth of characterization that feels like it might well be that familiar queerbaiting build up, it turns out that Captain Flint *was* in fact in love with another man and that the tragic ending of that affair *is* in fact what is motivating so many of his actions. The reveal is a glorious, glorious moment that made me punch the air, shout “Yes!” loud enough to scare the fuzzbeasts, and rewind to rewatch the scene agape. I’m still working my way through the rest of the show, and I have every expectation that I will continue to love it, but no matter what, it will forever hold a special place in my heart for that moment.

*Heh.


Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Well, I'm back.


I did not mean to take a year off from the blog, but here we are. This past year was somewhat unexpectedly hectic and difficult, at least as far as maintaining schedules for my personal projects, such as reading widely and writing, both for this blog and otherwise. We bought a house, and moved, and sold a house, and spent the last months of the year watching and waiting for the time for a beloved old cat to leave us. Just life, really, but the kind of “just life” upheavals that can make finding extra energy pretty darn hard.

The last I was here, I shared my goals for reading in 2019. They were nice goals, reflecting my values in conjunction with my reading life and my hopes for the ways I might tweak my reading life throughout the year. They were nice goals, and they did not work for me in the slightest for the year 2019 turned out to be. It was a year of pulling in for me, of feeling even more orientated toward home and safety than is usual for me, a natural homebody. Perhaps this should not have surprised me, given all the uprooting we did and all the subsequent attention that needed to be paid to recreating home (and severing ties with the house that had been home). Perhaps the fact that we only moved from one house to another in the same town we’ve lived in now for eight years fooled me into thinking that the move would not disrupt my normal. Psssht. I ought to know by now that big changes are, for me, Big Changes, and they will not be brushed aside as if they were not.

The fact that I woke up a few days into 2020 feeling renewed and ready to start something—anything, everything—afresh tells me that I needed that pulling-in time, which took the form of creating very little (not much writing, virtually no yarn craft) and stretching almost not at all when it came to my reading choices. My reading in the past year was largely comfortable—I didn’t stretch to read things that might challenge me, not in content, not in form, not in genre. I didn’t want reading to be work, even the minor work of fulfilling goals I had set myself, like reading some of the nonfiction from my shelves, working through some of the Book of the Month books that accumulated over the time I subscribed to the club, or reading more from my shelves. I just wanted to read whatever came to me in any given moment, whatever felt good, whatever wouldn’t ask much of me. And that was fine, that was what I needed to get back on even footing with myself. But it came with a cost.

I didn’t read much last year that really resonated with me, I didn’t read much that rolled up my socks, or even that strongly stuck with me. I lucked into a few reads that were great, but for the most part, my reading year in 2019 was… fine. Pulling in meant not reaching out, not seeking, and that meant just okayish reading. I suspect this in turn contributed to the downswing in creativity too. Curiosity breeds creation, after all.

So this year, while I am setting myself virtually no specific goals, I am looking to get back to trying things in my reading—new authors, maybe new genres—and not shying so much away from books I’m afraid won’t land smack dab in the middle of some sweet spot of perfect comfort read. I’m hoping this will lead to more wonderful reads and more creativity all around.

What are you looking to do with your reading life in 2020?



**The title is from the end of The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. But you knew that.

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Reading Goals for 2019

Often I set myself some manner of reading goals at the beginning of the year. I find that doing so can give my reading a sense of intent that is helpful for keeping my reading satisfying and to avoid feeling totally aimless when I choose my next read. For 2019, I'm keeping the same diversity goals I had in 2018, but switching up my more specific category goals. My numbered goals/challenges mostly arise from things I'm trying to tweak about my reading life (for instance, reading what I already own, reading what I buy rather than letting books sit around for months before getting to them, reading diversely). So, in 2019, I'm aiming to read: 

*At least ten books by POC authors
*At least ten books by LGBTQIA authors

and

1.) A book of poetry
2.) A short story collection from my shelves
3.) Any nonfiction work about religion from my shelves
4.) A nonfiction work about religion from my shelves not by C.S. Lewis
5.) A nonfiction work about science
6.) A mystery novel
7.) An sff novel from my shelves
8.) A novel in translation of a language I did not read in 2018
9.) A graphic novel from my shelves
10.) A middle grade novel from my shelves
11.) A Book of the Month book from my shelves
12.) A book I've purchased within 48 hours of starting it
13.) A book from my shelves purchased before 2010
14.) The second book in a series I started before 2019
15.) A book I have abandoned in the past
16.) A book that satisfies the American Authors Challenge on LibraryThing

"From my shelves" essentially means "came into my possession before 2019."

Do you set reading goals at the start of the year? What are yours for 2019?





Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Favorite Reads of 2018

As we celebrate the passing of 2018 and look forward to 2019, I’m looking back at my favorite reads from this year. As my reading is probably 85% backlist, these books were mostly not published in 2018; this is very much a list of my favorites from recent reading rather than any attempt at marking the best books of 2018. Links take you to my original review of each book on my 2018 reading thread on LibraryThing.


Grumpy Monkey, Suzanne Lang and Max Lang
While I just love, love, love the messages in this picture book about emotions, namely that negative emotions are okay to feel and that they will pass, what really makes it stand out to me as one of my favorite reads of the year are the illustrations. The emotions on Jim the monkey’s face are so expressive, helpfully illustrating the story and the message of the book while also being fun and humorous. Go look at the illustration on the front cover. I dare you not to smile.

Seven Days of Us, Francesca Hornak
One of the great surprises of my 2018 reading, Seven Days of Us absolutely charmed me with its story of a family forced to spend a holiday week in close proximity. I expected to enjoy the book but not nearly as much as I ended up doing. The story was fast-paced and fairly light while also providing more substance than I was expecting. Ultimately this was a fully satisfying family drama that I couldn’t put down.

We Were Eight Years in Power, Ta-Nahesi Coates
Coates’s collection of eight essays from the eight years of Obama’s presidency plus reflections on each of them was definitely my hardest read of 2018. It was also the most important by far. I learned so many things from this book that I didn’t know before, and many of the essays also clarified for me things I sort of knew but which were a bit jumbled up in my mind. If you’re looking to understand race relations and racism in American today, this is an excellent place to start.

Becky Chambers’s first novel is a cozy space adventure peopled by a complex, delightful found family making up a ship’s crew. I can’t recommend it more if you want a sci-fi story that will make you feel things, many of them warm and fuzzy.

The Tea Dragon Society, Katie O’Neill
Ah, The Tea Dragon Society. Has anything ever been as pure and warm and delightful as this middle grade graphic novel? The story presents the idea of tea dragons, feline-like dragons whose horns produce tea leaves. The dragons are adorable, and the story focuses on their care, which is exacting and requires great commitment from their carers. The book is largely a meditation on hard, rewarding work. Recommended in the strongest terms to just about anyone.

The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennet, read by the author
I read Alan Bennet’s novella about Queen Elizabeth II becoming a devout reader for the second time in 2018, but this time I listened to the audiobook, read by Bennet himself. The story is masterful, compelling, and fun in any format, but Bennet’s reading of it adds that little something that pushes it into possibly all-time favorite territory.

There you are, my favorite reads from 2018! What reads did you enjoy the most this past year?




Wednesday, December 5, 2018

For We Read a Little Christmas


One of my favorite things to do to get into the Christmas spirit is read a nice Christmassy book. Here’s a list of some of my favorites, along with a good few that I haven’t gotten to yet but have high hopes for.

Feels Like Christmas... Even If It's Not

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

Some books put me in mind of Christmas even though they have little or nothing to do with the holiday itself. I’m not sure what it says about me that the books that do that for me are fantasy novels, but perhaps the connection is not all that odd. After all, both of these series are deeply invested in the messages of Christianity, even if they are not overtly about Christianity or Christmas.


It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year... to Fall in Love

How the Dukes Stole Christmas, Tessa Dare, Sarah MacLean, Sophie Jordan, and Joanna Shupe
True-Blue Cowboy Christmas, Nicole Helm
Winter Wonderland, Heidi Cullinan

Nothing says Christmas reading to me like a lovely holiday romance novel. How the Dukes is a collection of four novellas with historical settings by four big names in historical romance. Each of these four stories is in light conversation with a famous Christmas story, and part of the fun of this collection is picking out the references and echoes. True-Blue is a contemporary cowboy romance and hits traditional things associated with 21st century Christmas celebrating pretty hard—you’ll find tree trimming and cookie making and so on here. Wonderland is an m/m contemporary with slight BDSM overtones. Like many of Cullinan’s works, it’s most excellent in its exploration of male friendship and found family. While the steam levels for these recommendations vary, note that none of them is “sweet”—there’s sex on the page in each of them. So heads up if that is not your flavor.


Deck the Halls with Deductive Reasoning

Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards
The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, edited by Tara Moore 

Here are two collections of Christmas tales that are on my TBR. Since I haven’t read them yet, I can’t vouch for them personally, but I am excited to give them a go. Silent Nights collects fifteen mysteries set at Christmas by British writers, and Ghost Stories presents thirteen Christmas-set ghost stories from the Victorian age. As a fan of A Christmas Carol, I’m particularly interested in tucking into the latter.


Oldies But Goodies

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
A Child's Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas
The Homecoming, Earl Hamner, Jr

Carol and Wales are two of my all-time favorite Christmas stories. I reread Carol every year and have done so since I was in my late teens. If you have never read it (especially if you have only ever seen one of the many admittedly very wonderful film adaptations), I encourage you to give it a try. It’s just the right length to satisfy any desire for Victorian vibes you may have (everyone gets wistful for Victorian times at Christmas, right? No? Just me?) without bogging you down, the details are exquisite, it’s funny, and it’s a wonderful redemption story. Wales is a short story just brimming with old-fashioned Christmas delights and absolutely stunning language. The Homecoming is the novel upon which the TV movie of the same name (which in turn spawned the TV show The Waltons) was based, and it’s a fascinating evocation of Christmas in depression-era Appalachia. Hamner captures his characters (especially the children) so quickly in small moments that they seem to jump off the page.



A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That


The Snow Queen and Other Winter Tales, Barnes and Noble
A Family Christmas, selected by Caroline Kennedy
A Christmas Treasury, Barnes and Noble

These three anthologies all provide a variety of Christmassy and winter tales and stories. Winter Tales is heavy on traditional tales and fairy tales, including many by Hans Christian Andersen, though stories by Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde also appear, as well as a few traditional Native American tales. A highlight may be Alexander Dumas’s novella-length The History of the Nutcracker, which retells E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” (which, unfortunately, is not included). Family Christmas includes mostly shorter Christmas pieces, and contains a lot of songs and poems as well as stories and articles. Be aware that not everything in this collection will be suitable for (or appealing to) children. Treasury collects ten stories and nine poems and would be an excellent one-shot for snagging several classics of Christmastime, including Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, and Clement Clark Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” This anthology also includes lovely full-color and black and white illustrations.

And This Is All True
Perhaps you prefer your Christmas reads with a side of learnin’? This pair of nonfiction Christmas books may suit you. These are also on my TBR (so again, I can’t recommend them personally, except to say that I want to read them).

Why Was the Partridge in the Pear Tree?, Reverend Mark Lawson-Jones
A Jane Austen Christmas, Maria Grace

Partridge is an illustrated little book that explores the history behind popular Christmas carols, examining the meaning of the lyrics, the relevant biblical passages, and the historical context of the carols. In thirteen chapters, Lawson-Jones discusses the history of carols and caroling, the Puritan dislike of Christmas, and the “golden age of carols” before devoting ten chapters to a carol each. Carols discussed include “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” "The Holly and the Ivy,” “Good King Wenceslas,” “The Coventry Carol” and two of my most favorites, “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “Once in Royal David’s City.” Austen Christmas illustrates what the celebration of Christmas looked like during Jane Austen’s time (the Regency), before the advent of much of the traditions we associate with Christmas now, many of which began later, in the Victorian period. Topics addressed include dress, games, caroling, gift-giving, food (including recipes), and charity.

What do you like to read at Christmastime? Are any of my favorites your favorites too?