Fannish Catch-up: Snowflake Challenge, Fandom Stocking, Miss Peregrine's movie, and Killjoys s2

[hamsterwoman]

Wrapping up the Snowflake Challenge:

Day 14: Go forth and commit an act of kindness.

I took the opportunity to fill a couple more random fandom_stockings on that day, and calling it done.

Day 15: In your own space, write a love letter to Fandom in general, to a particular fandom, to a trope, a relationship, a character, or to your flist/circle

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I have to mention what I thought was the single funniest scene/line in the entire second season, which was D'av mind-linking with the mossopede: "I had TEETH in my STOMACH."

"Mossopede" is also a pretty hilarious name, which sort of makes up for the episode introducing them that consisted of the actors wandering around a lot of cardboard flats for an hour.

Sadly missing: not even ONE crack about how D'av might be able to cure Fancy Lee of Sixness? Huge missed opportunity. Especially given the hate-flirting they ended up doing.

I also had issues with the Johnny/Pawter storyline that were basically the same as yours - Dutch and Johnny are MORE interesting and enjoyable to watch when they trust each other. You do not have to have conflict based on distrust, lying, and betrayal between leading characters to make a show interesting! This drives me nuts all the time. So often a story would be more interesting and fun if the leads had a solid relationship based on trust and the interpersonal conflict was either based on something else (differences in personality, morality, ideas of how best to handle stuff, etc) or they don't have a lot of interpersonal conflict with each other and work together against outside conflict.

I have mixed feelings about the thematic/plot tightness of season two. It did make the world feel less large and organic, but I also really admired how neatly constructed and well-foreshadowed it was. I assumed all that stuff about the holy tree and bloodletting in season one was just "let's invent a space religion," but no, it actually involved a real tree and the bloodletting had reasons and all of it was plot-relevant.

[hamsterwoman]

which was D'av mind-linking with the mossopede: "I had TEETH in my STOMACH."

I just really appreciate how D'av went from season 1, where he was all about amnesia angst and mind control trauma and killing or nearly killing people he loved to season 2, which seems to delight in putting him in totally ridiculous situations -- mind-melding with a mossopede! bodyswap with Khlyen! attempting to comfort small children! making people's eyeballs accidentally explode! team-building! XD

which sort of makes up for the episode introducing them that consisted of the actors wandering around a lot of cardboard flats for an hour.

LOL, yeah. I forgot how interminable that episode was until I reread my two-line reaction to it. I mean, it introduces several important items, the mossopedes and the skin scroll thing Alvis finds, but riveting television on its own that wasn't...

not even ONE crack about how D'av might be able to cure Fancy Lee of Sixness? Huge missed opportunity. Especially given the hate-flirting they ended up doing.

I hadn't thought of that but gooood point! (Though I suppose D'av kinda needed his Six-ness for human shield purposes for most of that time...)

or they don't have a lot of interpersonal conflict with each other and work together against outside conflict.

*nods* and I feel like in this case, Dutch and Johnny certainly had plenty of outside conflice to work against! The only thing the lying and distrust really accomplished was setting up the lovely moments in episode 9 between them, but I still think the same moments could've happened without the betrayal, etc.

It did make the world feel less large and organic, but I also really admired how neatly constructed and well-foreshadowed it was. I assumed all that stuff about the holy tree and bloodletting in season one was just "let's invent a space religion," but no

I agree with you in both regards. I was impressed by how well everything fit! (and like you, I had assumed the trees and blood were just space religion, maybe even some kind of Earth religion mutation). But while I admire the tightness of how it all fits together, I kind of missed the more episodic bits that season 1 had, and just a feeling of scale from when it didn't seem like everything was about plasma. I guess with such a short season as 10 episodes, there isn't really as much of an option to BOTH execute a well-plotted arc and have random non-arc episodes and worldbuilding, the way a show like B5 did it. But I'm hoping that with so many of the original big questions wrapped up, season 3 won't have to be quite so arc-relevant at every turn, or will at least introduce more new things for that sense of scale...