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 (

[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

[egelantier]

look at you, blasting through two seasons so quickly! i'm happy :D

i absolutely expected clara to be a regular from the start and was kind of disappointed that she wasn't - so i'm glad they brought her back, hopefully to stay? who knows. alvis/dutch works for me because i like alvis and i like that they don't present it as a happily-ever-after thing or some star-crossed-lovers thing, more like friends with (spiritual) benefits - i could buy it absolutely. and they went all the way there on delle seyah/dutch setup! it was so unexpected and awesome! delle seyah continues to be one of the most amazing things about this show, genocidal intriguing and all.

i'm with you on down/upsides of this season. i really didn't like johnny keeping secrets from dutch for no reason at all. and i love johnny and i like pawter and i liked the idea of them being together, but the execution just... did not stick, and i think made them both smaller, not better. and i'm sad we didn't get Badass Politician Queen Pawter, which i would've paid money for,

[hamsterwoman]

I know, I'm very proud of myself! (this might be the fastest I've ever watched more than one season of a show... this amount of TV hours.) Thank you again for recommending and reminding me about it :D

I had been expecting Clara to become at least a semi-regular like Alvis, so was surprised when she just took off after that one arc. Not disappointed so much, because I find myself very leery of Johnny potential love interests for some reason. I was all set to grudgingly admit that I could find Lucy/Johnny/Clara pretty cute, and then they took off in a totally different ship. What's up with that! I mean, hopefully they will be back with Lucy and Dutch just as quickly as D'av was in s2, but still.

Once I realized Dutch/Alvis was just friends with (spiritual, heh) benefits, I was totally OK with that. And I find that I like Alvis -- as long as he's not part of the main action. The episodes when he was hanging out on Lucy didn't work for me as well (even though I found D'av's continuous ribbing of him for creepiness amusing).

and they

[hamsterwoman]

and i think made them both smaller, not better.

Yeah, I agree -- you articulated it better, but that was my problem with the way their relationship played out, basically. And I, too, mourn the loss of potential with Qreshi Queen Pawter...

"Weirdly funnier" is right -- I guess it goes along with the darker tone.

lucy got to kiss johnny for real! khlyen got a truly fantastic send off! pree is an ex-warlord!

Yes, yes, and yes! :D And Turin grew on me, too, which I hadn't expected.

but re: dutch&johnny, it was everything i ever wanted, and it made up for a lot.

I was very grateful for that, after the hiccups.

[asthenie_vd]

I've never heard of Watchmaker of Filigree Street before, but the summary on goodreads sounds kinda intriguing. Have you read it? (If you did you probably wrote about it on here, but I can't remember it!)

[hamsterwoman]

I have read it, and liked it quite a lot / definitely recommend it. It's a book better read unspoiled, I think, so I won't link back to my write-up, but: it's a quiet, slow book that I hesitate to really pin to a genre, even though it fits within my general envelope of Victorian/gaslight fantasy reading binge last year -- it feels more like magical realism rather than outright fantasy to me, for some reason. The writing is lovely, and accomplishes some impressive things, I thought. There is one central aspect of the book that I'm still not sure if was a feature or a bug. It made for a lot of discussion when I read it, and I'm still very much of two minds about it, whether it contributes to the complexity of the book in interesting ways or represents an unintentional falling short of what the author was going for. But I definitely think it's a book well worth reading if you're OK with subtle characterization and a plot that's very, very secondary to everything else that's going on. (There is a plot, and it's even well done, I thought.

[asthenie_vd]

Oh, if the characters are good I don't mind if the plot isn't captivating. I'll probably read this one, thanks. :)

[hamsterwoman]

I hope you enjoy it! I would love to hear your thoughts when/if you do read it.

[_profiterole_]

I haven't read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, but I've seen several people not happy about the adaptation. One thing I noticed (and I've been told it wasn't from the book) is that some of the time travel makes very little sense. If you go back in time and kill a murderer also going back in time, I don't see how this is going to erase the murder he's already committed in the future.

[hamsterwoman]

Yeah, I do think time travel works a bit differently in the movie than in the book (the book, IIRC, doesn't have the "un-murdering Jake's grandfather" plot at all -- he stays dead...) Going back in time to prevent something bad from happening in the future is a time-honored sci-fi trope -- but it presupposes a flexible time continuum which can be altered, and I didn't get the sense that the books do. But tbh the time travel in the books didn't make much sense to me either, so this didn't feel worse, just different.

The reviews that turned up for me when I searched for differences between book and movie to refresh my memory seemed happy with the changes, except that they screw up the possibility of a sequel, I guess. What were the complaints you saw? I'm curious because I did feel like, even though the movie changed a lot, and some of the things they introduced were really silly, the changes seemed true to the spirit of the book to me.

[_profiterole_]

Something about the movie being too mushy compared to the book. Like the squirrel scene, I think.

[hamsterwoman]

Ah, OK, yeah. It's definitely cutesified, but I figure that's pretty much a given with a movie adaptation. (And I think just the overall tone is shifted, in part because the plot is justled around considerably to give an explicitly happy ending rather than a still-in-peril-but-with-some-hope one of the book Which, admittedly, makes sense for a movie that's either a standalone or, at best, at the very beginning of a potential franchise.)

[meathiel]

I actually like the Miss Peregrine books so I don't know if I'll like the film ... will have to wait until it comes out on DVD now.

[hamsterwoman]

lyssa027 below reports that she liked both :) And I do feel like the movie preserves most of the important aspects of the book (while changing up the plot considerably). I do feel like the changes are very much in the spirit of the first book, if that makes sense.