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beccaelizabethYesterday I finished watching the Lost Girl box set by staying up really late. Not because I was enjoying it. Because I knew if I didn't I'd be the same annoyed today.
Does nobody in television stories have a deliberate wanted baby with someone they love due to consensual activities? Presumably in genres I don't watch that happens, but in F&SF, everyone goes to the creepy place. And it's the worst.
I mean, the opening titles of 4 seasons of Lost Girl, and the high point of the final boss fight, says 'I shall live the life I choose'. So why is the story they actually show us about not being able to choose?
I mean Tamsin didn't even have a moment of 'oh hey, creepy hellspawn child that will literally kill me, how about maybe we don't?' Like, from her actions she was keeping the baby because she thinks of them as her baby and doesn't want the creepy rapist shapeshifter to have anything to do with them, but nobody even suggested 'how about not spawning and maybe possibly surviving instead'. Did she not know that pregnancy kills Valkyries? Because in this universe pregnancy kills her species. Always. They make only one baby and then die. But I guess they also have multiple lives so... huh, logically someone gets to raise both the mother and the baby. But. The point is. You would think Valkyrie school would mention at some point that pregnancy equals death. And then they could have some methods to avoid dying. Because women getting to choose and be the boss of themselves is the actual point of the show... at least as stated.
Though actually she was trying lesbianism as what ought to be a foolproof contraceptive method, but see shapeshifter.
And then when Bo was going to save her life Tamsin tells her not to??? ?? ?
Because the thing we want to see is a woman giving birth and then dying and then being replaced by her offspring before the closing credits. Circle of life.
*shudders*
So at the end of the season of the three people in love with Bo the two she was in love with back get to survive, having worked out between them that the immortal one will wait for the human lifetime to run out before he has a turn with Bo, which doesn't look a whole lot like Bo choosing to me.
Plus those three between them were Dark fae, Light fae, and human.
Bo's whole thing the whole time has been refusing to choose between Dark and Light. And in season 2 she got all told off for obviously being Light and thinking Dark meant evil. But in subsequent seasons the show kind of seems to agree? Tamsin is Dark but her whole arc got expressed as 'but what if I don't wanna be dark' and even then she's the one of them as gets killed in the end, which seems like a pretty emphatic rejection of Dark on a narrative level.
And the other persistent representative of the Dark was Vex, very briefly Morrigan but somehow not taking it up again when Evony goes mortal, secretly super powerful last of his species angst machine, has a whole change of heart... expressed as him hanging around at the Dal instead of talking to Dark people any more. He gets a compass for finally finding his way, morally speaking presumably since he's not exactly doing a lot of direction-y stuff where we can see it. He stops killing people who the Light wouldn't kill? Probably? He starts letting the Light warriors aim him? This is progress?
The point of the Dark and the Light initially was they were different sides, was all. And the Dark leader the Morrigan had a responsibility to optimise conditions for their side, and protect them, and use their resources for the Dark. Except at some point they were simplified to the short term party animals who kill humans for fun, and then simplified further to being Evil.
Bo's final choice wasn't about acknowledging she's both Light and Dark and gets strength from both, it was in so many words that she's both Good and Evil.
So if Dark is evil then why is it such a good thing to be unaligned?
And it is a good thing, because that's the goal of the colony after the dust settles in the near future tag at the end.
One way or another it just failed to make a theme clear, and it's frustrating.
Especially since the ways Dark were evil initially? They ran the goth club with the BDSM club underneath it. Vex was a happy masochist. And it all turned out to be super coercive and evil. And over time Vex being more responsible is Vex being less goth and not getting whipped any more. :eyeroll:
Though I did like how he chose to face the apocalypse in high heeled shoes. I didn't like how lingerie and high heels were the choice of team evil, but when he switched teams he's still got the shoes, so okay.
It was frustrating right at the end though because... well, two layers of because: because they seemed to be under the impression they'd given him a redemption arc? I don't see it. They had him be a recurring pain in their necks, have an angsty background, realise he had actual heart feelings for someone, say he regretted everything, and that somehow added up to an arc. But he was only ever helpful when his personal neck was also on the line? I don't think he put the work in. Mopey basement Spike at very best. Not even that, hardly ever helpful. So then when he got something that looked quite a lot like his heart's desire at the end? They just hadn't been clear enough, so it felt kind of blergh.
But it was super frustrating because if they're going to do an m/m pairing, even one involving a character I can't stand, there should at least be one free willed chosen kiss that doesn't involve visions or shapeshifting or rubbish like that. They held hands. That's cute. But. I tried thinking back and I tried to think of one time there was an m/m pairing with kissing, and I could only think of that dude with his husband who was already dead? And I'm not sure they kissed? So this show is a giant could do better on m/m relationships. As in, there could have been one.
So the ending kills the Dark ex-girlfriend and gives a happily ever after to the girlfriend and a delayed HEA to the boyfriend. Could be worse. But... again, just working from the thing they put in every episode, the whole refusing to choose sides, live by her own rules, live the life she chooses... why does she have to choose only one? I never understood that. Especially since they covered Bo being non-monogamous, repeatedly, that's a given... but somehow not when it's people she loves? Like, how is that supposed to be an improvement? Love them all!
So it wasn't a very queer show in some ways, it was a monogamous vanilla heteronormative show that was really into lesbians.
Could do better.
And it seems like the same mess as with Dark ending up meaning evil, and Hades being a hell god of evil. They set out to be daring and edgy or some such and then didn't even understand that there's different sets of values. Like they're doing Our Hades is Different, but it was a fail in values shift, because they took some names from several different pagan systems and then made them a binary good place and bad place, and the guy in the bad place was evil. That has very little to do with either pagan beliefs or the Dark Light dichotomy as previously stated. And having them be a feeding ground for particularly powerful Fae would be logical in universe, but they're just, like, afterlives? And making Hades a god of undead is just a bit fail. He's boss of the judgement, and in charge of the places for good people and bad. He's not big on sending them out again. Making him a Fae mistaken for a god, taking all the stories and making them worse, making him Evil, it's just... boring. I mean, you're playing with devils and giving them the wrong name. And it never made clear what he feeds on, either, so his plan makes no sense. Like, kill everyone and feed on what? So it's just the same old values pasted over a story that then is basically about bad guys.
Did you notice how they rarely made clear what the Light feed on? Like Trick and Dyson and Hale are fae, fae are defined as preying on humans and needing to feed on them, but we don't know what either of them need to feed their Fae hungers. And the whole thing with Fae as secret background to history with alternate sets of morals, that's about feeding their needs. They've got the rules set up different because their needs are different. So not showing what they need and not showing how their rules get them what they need makes them make not a lot of sense. But the Dark? The Dark are defined by their appetites. And they're things that kill those they feed on, like Evony's brain melting talent thing, or Vex feeding by taking control of other people's bodies.
And they never follow through on the metaphor. Like, everyone survives because they need something from other humans. Most employers make a business out of (theoretically voluntarily) controlling the talents and bodies of others, so where is the line that makes these guys evil? Is there anyone with Evony's hunger that farms sustainably and doesn't send their talent mad? Is that a possibility? Which things are needs and which can be controlled?
We know when it's Bo, but even there they tend to skip an ethical layer. Like, sometimes for a case or for money or pizza she'll use her succubus powers to do sex stuff the other person doesn't want. And sometimes she'll need healing and just get takeout, even if that person probably hadn't had sex in mind before she used her powers on them. When it's Dyson volunteering in full knowledge, that's cool and consensual, but a lot of the time it don't seem like it is. Still filmed like it's sexy. But it seems like the ethical line Bo and the story drew is the one where she doesn't kill people any more. And, like, really? The story is centrally about sex and yet that's the closest it gets to ethical?
Also it never uses the right words for when someone uses their powers to do sex to someone who would not otherwise have agreed. Even when it was creepy shapeshifter guy they never used the word. Pretty sure it's important to use the word.
I get frustrated about five seasons of story that think they're about having the right to choose and then film sexily the times people aren't given a whole choice and then skip over the ethical implications.
I am also really fed up of how black characters get killed, killed, killed off and not replaced, the story bends over backwards to bring white people back from the dead but not a black man even once, and somehow they were never important enough to the narrative to keep around. See also asian characters. It really seriously needed to do better on race.
So added all together Lost Girl had a lot of frustrations, some layers of could do better, a few where they along with most TV must do better like race, and two giant good points in how many women there are and how there are actual bisexual and lesbian characters routinely.
But even there, the way stories treat women with power as potential monsters was never subverted. Power was always monstrous and virtue lay in learning how not to use it.
And it epically misunderstood what a Queen is. It got it right in the Garuda story, a Queen is someone who her people care about enough to set their other differences aside and set their strength to her use. But after that it was much less about politics and bringing people together, and much more about Bo levelling up and wondering if she's a monster.
Also? It makes no sense in the here now to tell stories that tell you in so many words that the only way to be the master is for the old masters to die. It makes epic level anti sense when Fae can live for thousands of years. Wiping out the elders cannot be the only way to change, or to grow into your power, or whatever, because then you'd have to wait thousands of years and only be top level for a generation. Once again it should be about being the one who can bring the most people together, especially those divided by old arguments, thinking innovatively, and bringing new solutions to the old problems. That makes you the new power. And it seems to me just really anti feminist to have her end game be to take power over the dead bodies of her male ancestors. Implying that a woman's power depends on getting men out of the way is not good. Add it up next to women getting depowered, dethroned, and killed, and it's just... where were the powerful women who would be by Bo's side as she rules both light and dark? Nowhere, because somehow having no leaders is the improved endgame.
So while I was watching I liked the characters and I liked a lot of the stories, and it has so much more of the good stuff ie women. But as soon as I stop and think about it I just get really annoyed. And while I do pause and wonder how much of this is a fair standard to hold a show to - I know I'm super cranky this week, I know some of it is my mood, but - some of it is actual important fail on their part.
But then I wonder if I'll ever be happy with anything ever.
Ugh.
But I also feel like I shouldn't crit anything unless I, personally, can do better.
... which is daft. They're whole different degrees for a start.
But whenever I sit down and try and words for stories, all there is is this huge bundle of frustration and anger and occasionally cry, and criticism that just gets all over anything I even start trying to think about, and then just... nothing. For years. The words place is full of feelings and they're not nice feelings.
So from that angle everything that actually gets made is made much better than anything I make, and then I feel foolish.
But we need better stories. Getting only one thing kind of a bit right is still not good enough. We can't say there's good stories for women even in Lost Girl because there's bugger all women of color and the few that occasionally arrive have very bad things happen to them and get dead a lot. Good stories for white women just isn't enough. Like good stories for lesbians and bisexual women isn't enough if the only story about a trans woman is so gross. Women is women is all women, so it has to be good at everything at once, to be good at any of it.
Except high standard much?
So I don't know.
Does nobody in television stories have a deliberate wanted baby with someone they love due to consensual activities? Presumably in genres I don't watch that happens, but in F&SF, everyone goes to the creepy place. And it's the worst.
I mean, the opening titles of 4 seasons of Lost Girl, and the high point of the final boss fight, says 'I shall live the life I choose'. So why is the story they actually show us about not being able to choose?
I mean Tamsin didn't even have a moment of 'oh hey, creepy hellspawn child that will literally kill me, how about maybe we don't?' Like, from her actions she was keeping the baby because she thinks of them as her baby and doesn't want the creepy rapist shapeshifter to have anything to do with them, but nobody even suggested 'how about not spawning and maybe possibly surviving instead'. Did she not know that pregnancy kills Valkyries? Because in this universe pregnancy kills her species. Always. They make only one baby and then die. But I guess they also have multiple lives so... huh, logically someone gets to raise both the mother and the baby. But. The point is. You would think Valkyrie school would mention at some point that pregnancy equals death. And then they could have some methods to avoid dying. Because women getting to choose and be the boss of themselves is the actual point of the show... at least as stated.
Though actually she was trying lesbianism as what ought to be a foolproof contraceptive method, but see shapeshifter.
And then when Bo was going to save her life Tamsin tells her not to??? ?? ?
Because the thing we want to see is a woman giving birth and then dying and then being replaced by her offspring before the closing credits. Circle of life.
*shudders*
So at the end of the season of the three people in love with Bo the two she was in love with back get to survive, having worked out between them that the immortal one will wait for the human lifetime to run out before he has a turn with Bo, which doesn't look a whole lot like Bo choosing to me.
Plus those three between them were Dark fae, Light fae, and human.
Bo's whole thing the whole time has been refusing to choose between Dark and Light. And in season 2 she got all told off for obviously being Light and thinking Dark meant evil. But in subsequent seasons the show kind of seems to agree? Tamsin is Dark but her whole arc got expressed as 'but what if I don't wanna be dark' and even then she's the one of them as gets killed in the end, which seems like a pretty emphatic rejection of Dark on a narrative level.
And the other persistent representative of the Dark was Vex, very briefly Morrigan but somehow not taking it up again when Evony goes mortal, secretly super powerful last of his species angst machine, has a whole change of heart... expressed as him hanging around at the Dal instead of talking to Dark people any more. He gets a compass for finally finding his way, morally speaking presumably since he's not exactly doing a lot of direction-y stuff where we can see it. He stops killing people who the Light wouldn't kill? Probably? He starts letting the Light warriors aim him? This is progress?
The point of the Dark and the Light initially was they were different sides, was all. And the Dark leader the Morrigan had a responsibility to optimise conditions for their side, and protect them, and use their resources for the Dark. Except at some point they were simplified to the short term party animals who kill humans for fun, and then simplified further to being Evil.
Bo's final choice wasn't about acknowledging she's both Light and Dark and gets strength from both, it was in so many words that she's both Good and Evil.
So if Dark is evil then why is it such a good thing to be unaligned?
And it is a good thing, because that's the goal of the colony after the dust settles in the near future tag at the end.
One way or another it just failed to make a theme clear, and it's frustrating.
Especially since the ways Dark were evil initially? They ran the goth club with the BDSM club underneath it. Vex was a happy masochist. And it all turned out to be super coercive and evil. And over time Vex being more responsible is Vex being less goth and not getting whipped any more. :eyeroll:
Though I did like how he chose to face the apocalypse in high heeled shoes. I didn't like how lingerie and high heels were the choice of team evil, but when he switched teams he's still got the shoes, so okay.
It was frustrating right at the end though because... well, two layers of because: because they seemed to be under the impression they'd given him a redemption arc? I don't see it. They had him be a recurring pain in their necks, have an angsty background, realise he had actual heart feelings for someone, say he regretted everything, and that somehow added up to an arc. But he was only ever helpful when his personal neck was also on the line? I don't think he put the work in. Mopey basement Spike at very best. Not even that, hardly ever helpful. So then when he got something that looked quite a lot like his heart's desire at the end? They just hadn't been clear enough, so it felt kind of blergh.
But it was super frustrating because if they're going to do an m/m pairing, even one involving a character I can't stand, there should at least be one free willed chosen kiss that doesn't involve visions or shapeshifting or rubbish like that. They held hands. That's cute. But. I tried thinking back and I tried to think of one time there was an m/m pairing with kissing, and I could only think of that dude with his husband who was already dead? And I'm not sure they kissed? So this show is a giant could do better on m/m relationships. As in, there could have been one.
So the ending kills the Dark ex-girlfriend and gives a happily ever after to the girlfriend and a delayed HEA to the boyfriend. Could be worse. But... again, just working from the thing they put in every episode, the whole refusing to choose sides, live by her own rules, live the life she chooses... why does she have to choose only one? I never understood that. Especially since they covered Bo being non-monogamous, repeatedly, that's a given... but somehow not when it's people she loves? Like, how is that supposed to be an improvement? Love them all!
So it wasn't a very queer show in some ways, it was a monogamous vanilla heteronormative show that was really into lesbians.
Could do better.
And it seems like the same mess as with Dark ending up meaning evil, and Hades being a hell god of evil. They set out to be daring and edgy or some such and then didn't even understand that there's different sets of values. Like they're doing Our Hades is Different, but it was a fail in values shift, because they took some names from several different pagan systems and then made them a binary good place and bad place, and the guy in the bad place was evil. That has very little to do with either pagan beliefs or the Dark Light dichotomy as previously stated. And having them be a feeding ground for particularly powerful Fae would be logical in universe, but they're just, like, afterlives? And making Hades a god of undead is just a bit fail. He's boss of the judgement, and in charge of the places for good people and bad. He's not big on sending them out again. Making him a Fae mistaken for a god, taking all the stories and making them worse, making him Evil, it's just... boring. I mean, you're playing with devils and giving them the wrong name. And it never made clear what he feeds on, either, so his plan makes no sense. Like, kill everyone and feed on what? So it's just the same old values pasted over a story that then is basically about bad guys.
Did you notice how they rarely made clear what the Light feed on? Like Trick and Dyson and Hale are fae, fae are defined as preying on humans and needing to feed on them, but we don't know what either of them need to feed their Fae hungers. And the whole thing with Fae as secret background to history with alternate sets of morals, that's about feeding their needs. They've got the rules set up different because their needs are different. So not showing what they need and not showing how their rules get them what they need makes them make not a lot of sense. But the Dark? The Dark are defined by their appetites. And they're things that kill those they feed on, like Evony's brain melting talent thing, or Vex feeding by taking control of other people's bodies.
And they never follow through on the metaphor. Like, everyone survives because they need something from other humans. Most employers make a business out of (theoretically voluntarily) controlling the talents and bodies of others, so where is the line that makes these guys evil? Is there anyone with Evony's hunger that farms sustainably and doesn't send their talent mad? Is that a possibility? Which things are needs and which can be controlled?
We know when it's Bo, but even there they tend to skip an ethical layer. Like, sometimes for a case or for money or pizza she'll use her succubus powers to do sex stuff the other person doesn't want. And sometimes she'll need healing and just get takeout, even if that person probably hadn't had sex in mind before she used her powers on them. When it's Dyson volunteering in full knowledge, that's cool and consensual, but a lot of the time it don't seem like it is. Still filmed like it's sexy. But it seems like the ethical line Bo and the story drew is the one where she doesn't kill people any more. And, like, really? The story is centrally about sex and yet that's the closest it gets to ethical?
Also it never uses the right words for when someone uses their powers to do sex to someone who would not otherwise have agreed. Even when it was creepy shapeshifter guy they never used the word. Pretty sure it's important to use the word.
I get frustrated about five seasons of story that think they're about having the right to choose and then film sexily the times people aren't given a whole choice and then skip over the ethical implications.
I am also really fed up of how black characters get killed, killed, killed off and not replaced, the story bends over backwards to bring white people back from the dead but not a black man even once, and somehow they were never important enough to the narrative to keep around. See also asian characters. It really seriously needed to do better on race.
So added all together Lost Girl had a lot of frustrations, some layers of could do better, a few where they along with most TV must do better like race, and two giant good points in how many women there are and how there are actual bisexual and lesbian characters routinely.
But even there, the way stories treat women with power as potential monsters was never subverted. Power was always monstrous and virtue lay in learning how not to use it.
And it epically misunderstood what a Queen is. It got it right in the Garuda story, a Queen is someone who her people care about enough to set their other differences aside and set their strength to her use. But after that it was much less about politics and bringing people together, and much more about Bo levelling up and wondering if she's a monster.
Also? It makes no sense in the here now to tell stories that tell you in so many words that the only way to be the master is for the old masters to die. It makes epic level anti sense when Fae can live for thousands of years. Wiping out the elders cannot be the only way to change, or to grow into your power, or whatever, because then you'd have to wait thousands of years and only be top level for a generation. Once again it should be about being the one who can bring the most people together, especially those divided by old arguments, thinking innovatively, and bringing new solutions to the old problems. That makes you the new power. And it seems to me just really anti feminist to have her end game be to take power over the dead bodies of her male ancestors. Implying that a woman's power depends on getting men out of the way is not good. Add it up next to women getting depowered, dethroned, and killed, and it's just... where were the powerful women who would be by Bo's side as she rules both light and dark? Nowhere, because somehow having no leaders is the improved endgame.
So while I was watching I liked the characters and I liked a lot of the stories, and it has so much more of the good stuff ie women. But as soon as I stop and think about it I just get really annoyed. And while I do pause and wonder how much of this is a fair standard to hold a show to - I know I'm super cranky this week, I know some of it is my mood, but - some of it is actual important fail on their part.
But then I wonder if I'll ever be happy with anything ever.
Ugh.
But I also feel like I shouldn't crit anything unless I, personally, can do better.
... which is daft. They're whole different degrees for a start.
But whenever I sit down and try and words for stories, all there is is this huge bundle of frustration and anger and occasionally cry, and criticism that just gets all over anything I even start trying to think about, and then just... nothing. For years. The words place is full of feelings and they're not nice feelings.
So from that angle everything that actually gets made is made much better than anything I make, and then I feel foolish.
But we need better stories. Getting only one thing kind of a bit right is still not good enough. We can't say there's good stories for women even in Lost Girl because there's bugger all women of color and the few that occasionally arrive have very bad things happen to them and get dead a lot. Good stories for white women just isn't enough. Like good stories for lesbians and bisexual women isn't enough if the only story about a trans woman is so gross. Women is women is all women, so it has to be good at everything at once, to be good at any of it.
Except high standard much?
So I don't know.