The Secret Circle 1x1 comments
Yep, I watched it. warning: some references to the books included in the cut.
The first episode was actually much better than I was expecting. (Luckily for them, I had exceedingly low expectations.) It was at least 10x better than the TVD premiere. Thus, I have moderate hopes for this to be entertaining. Witches have never been my thing -- I've always been into vampires since childhood... witches, not so much. But I like urban fantasy and I'm sick of series filled with standalone episodes, so I'll definitely give any supernaturally inclined serial a shot.
A bit disappointed at a couple changes from the books.
I'll admit right up front that I remember little about them. I read them back when I first read the Vampire Diaries series, when I was about 12 or 13. But while I was enthralled with the TVD books and read them repeatedly, I didn't even buy the Secret Circle books. (Or if I did, I tossed them years ago.) I remember finding the love triangle deeply uninteresting and the protagonist didn't draw me in.
However, I do recall some basic things. And the general concept of Faye's character is ringing true to me. But Diana - ugh. Not that I enjoyed her in the books, because goody-two shoe, holier-than-thou paragons made me want to gag even at 12 years old. But still, if the whole underpinning of the stupid, pointless triangle is that Cassie & Adam are ~destined but oh no, they can't just get together because he's in a high school relationship with the most perfect, sweet angel than ever was angelic... You kind of need her to be the equivalent of christ come to earth. Right? TV!Diana has to be written a certain way to give our conflict any weight, where Cassie & Adam just CANNOT let their magical true true passionate love take hold because Diana is just so flipping nice that making her cry would be killing kittens AND CASSIE IS NOT A KITTEN MURDERER. OH NO SIREE.
So where was all the Cassie&Diana bonding, where Diana instantly adopts her, becomes her ~first friend in town, and Cassie actualfax cries in her sweet, sisterly arms? (oh, and Cassie is like amazed at Diana's gentle beauty. Like, enthralled and wanting to STROKE HER SILKEN FAIRY PRINCESS HAIR.) (so gay) (It's like they were sisters! If sisters want to secretly make sweet sweet love to each other, in a bed of floating roses.)
Anyway, it's also a poor decision imo to reduce the coven to only 6 kids because that kills a lot of the power play drama about the mantle of coven leader. The whole jockeying for power deal is more meaningful when it's 11 other people you'd be leading instead of... 5. I get that for casting they couldn't afford so many regulars, but they didn't need to have them all appear regularly - many of them could have been supporting background characters, until they were needed for story purposes.
On the plus side: whee suspense! Gale Harold was deliciously menacing. I loved every scene with him. I'm definitely giving the series a 4 episode trial for his sake.
They're clearly going their own way and tossing most of the book plotting, so it will be fun to see what they come up with. (And how many bodies they drop.) The opening was good, we've got no voice overs, and humming will always creep me the fuck out ever since Rosemary's Baby.
Faye is absolutely smoking hot and I want to ship her with everybody.
I know I'm incredibly picky about my femslash, but I really would like to read some good Faye/Cassie I think... (I would have been all over Cassie/Diana/Adam OT3 in the books 'verse, even though there wasn't that poly subtext like in TVD, but it looks like I'm not feeling any Diana/Cassie chemistry so far on the tv series). Faye/Nick/Cassie, also an appealing option. (The Nick thing makes sense later. He has manpain. Faye has womanpain. ergo, Cassie should sleep with them.)
This entry was originally posted at http://silviakundera.dreamwidth.org/830701.html. There are
comments.
The first episode was actually much better than I was expecting. (Luckily for them, I had exceedingly low expectations.) It was at least 10x better than the TVD premiere. Thus, I have moderate hopes for this to be entertaining. Witches have never been my thing -- I've always been into vampires since childhood... witches, not so much. But I like urban fantasy and I'm sick of series filled with standalone episodes, so I'll definitely give any supernaturally inclined serial a shot.
A bit disappointed at a couple changes from the books.
I'll admit right up front that I remember little about them. I read them back when I first read the Vampire Diaries series, when I was about 12 or 13. But while I was enthralled with the TVD books and read them repeatedly, I didn't even buy the Secret Circle books. (Or if I did, I tossed them years ago.) I remember finding the love triangle deeply uninteresting and the protagonist didn't draw me in.
However, I do recall some basic things. And the general concept of Faye's character is ringing true to me. But Diana - ugh. Not that I enjoyed her in the books, because goody-two shoe, holier-than-thou paragons made me want to gag even at 12 years old. But still, if the whole underpinning of the stupid, pointless triangle is that Cassie & Adam are ~destined but oh no, they can't just get together because he's in a high school relationship with the most perfect, sweet angel than ever was angelic... You kind of need her to be the equivalent of christ come to earth. Right? TV!Diana has to be written a certain way to give our conflict any weight, where Cassie & Adam just CANNOT let their magical true true passionate love take hold because Diana is just so flipping nice that making her cry would be killing kittens AND CASSIE IS NOT A KITTEN MURDERER. OH NO SIREE.
So where was all the Cassie&Diana bonding, where Diana instantly adopts her, becomes her ~first friend in town, and Cassie actualfax cries in her sweet, sisterly arms? (oh, and Cassie is like amazed at Diana's gentle beauty. Like, enthralled and wanting to STROKE HER SILKEN FAIRY PRINCESS HAIR.) (so gay) (It's like they were sisters! If sisters want to secretly make sweet sweet love to each other, in a bed of floating roses.)
Anyway, it's also a poor decision imo to reduce the coven to only 6 kids because that kills a lot of the power play drama about the mantle of coven leader. The whole jockeying for power deal is more meaningful when it's 11 other people you'd be leading instead of... 5. I get that for casting they couldn't afford so many regulars, but they didn't need to have them all appear regularly - many of them could have been supporting background characters, until they were needed for story purposes.
On the plus side: whee suspense! Gale Harold was deliciously menacing. I loved every scene with him. I'm definitely giving the series a 4 episode trial for his sake.
They're clearly going their own way and tossing most of the book plotting, so it will be fun to see what they come up with. (And how many bodies they drop.) The opening was good, we've got no voice overs, and humming will always creep me the fuck out ever since Rosemary's Baby.
Faye is absolutely smoking hot and I want to ship her with everybody.
I know I'm incredibly picky about my femslash, but I really would like to read some good Faye/Cassie I think... (I would have been all over Cassie/Diana/Adam OT3 in the books 'verse, even though there wasn't that poly subtext like in TVD, but it looks like I'm not feeling any Diana/Cassie chemistry so far on the tv series). Faye/Nick/Cassie, also an appealing option. (The Nick thing makes sense later. He has manpain. Faye has womanpain. ergo, Cassie should sleep with them.)
This entry was originally posted at http://silviakundera.dreamwidth.org/830701.html. There are
comments.