Reading/Watching Log #33

The problem with movies and shows these days is that if you don't watch immediately, you'll inevitably get spoiled within a few weeks. I've never watched a single episode of Jane the Virgin or The Good Place, and yet I know about the massive twists that have recently taken place, and though I caught up with A Quiet Place, Solo and Deadpool 2 this month, I again went in knowing all about the deaths that took place.

I'm not that fussed about spoilers – in fact, I think it's my responsibility to simply stay off the internet if there's an upcoming film I want to see without any foreknowledge, but it's harder to avoid spoilers from long-running television shows that I simply haven't had the chance to catch up with. Ah well.

I got through a lot of stuff this month, which surprised me considering I feel as busy as ever, but since a lot of the books and DVDs came from the library, I suppose I felt the time limitations more keenly than usual. Below are pre-teen mysteries, renegade aliens, basement ghosts, vandalised cars, rebellious princesses, talking bears, spinster detectives – variety is truly the spice of life. 

Meta: A Merlin Retrospective Part II

Continuing on from the first half of my ongoing Merlin retrospective, here are the rest of my favourite episodes from seasons three, four and five. As you can imagine, things get a little dire after season three, but there are still some good characters, scenes and ideas that manage to wriggle their way through the dross.

Meta: A Merlin Retrospective Part I

It was ten years ago today that the first episode of Merlin aired. Yes, you read that right: ten years. Not five, but ten. A solid decade.

All these years later, I have to admit that I haven't really given the show much thought since its conclusion. No matter how good preceding episodes or seasons might be, if a long-running story doesn't stick the landing, an audience has little reason to return to it.

And despite a rich premise and a wonderful cast, the show never made good on its promises. Storylines were spun out in endless circles, entire swaths of character development occurred off-screen, and the central hypothesis of the whole show (that Arthur and Merlin would build a magic-friendly kingdom of peace and glory together) never actually came to fruition.

In my mind, Merlin came to an ending at the end of the third season, with a finale that certainly has a lot of threads left dangling, but which also leaves our main characters in a good place. Sure, stopping here means we don't see Arthur become king, Guinevere become queen, Morgana get defeated or Merlin finally revealing his secret – but then seasons four and five didn't bother capitalizing on these developments either; not to any meaningful extent.

May as well quit when you're ahead.

And don't get me started on the fandom. My previous fandom was also my very first fandom: the BBC's Robin Hood, which spoiled me with its chilled-out attitude and ability to conduct reasonable discussions.

In comparison, the Merlin fandom was one giant screaming cesspit of misogyny and racism, in which slash shippers seemed certain that if they levelled enough harassment and hatred at Angel Coulby's Guinevere (who incidentally walked off with the closest thing to actual character development and a satisfying narrative arc) they would get to see Merlin and Arthur make out at some point.

This plan didn't work, and it's to my continual joy that both Angel and Katie McGrath (another target of relentless ire) have enjoyed consistent work since Merlin wrapped up.

But despite the ups and downs, I can't disregard the five years I spent with Merlin. (You know all those episode summaries on TV Tropes? Yup... that was me). Back in those days I had to wait for episodes to be uploaded onto YouTube, was working with extremely limited Broadband, and didn't have a Tumblr account (I would just lurk on other people's dashboards in order to see all the GIFs).  Heck, I didn't even have this blog. Those were the days of LiveJournal, where you can still read my reviews of season four and five episodes.

But I have fond memories of watching Merlin clips and homemade MVs on YouTube, and of the imaginative scope the show afforded me in the way it left so many stones unturned; so many avenues unexplored, that new ideas and story possibilities sprung up in my own head.

So I wanted to do something to commemorate the beginning of Merlin, and so have dug out the extremely long retrospective I wrote at its conclusion. Because it was first published on LiveJournal, which has no mechanism for seeing how many hits a singular page is getting, I have no idea how many people read it when it was first posted. However, I saw it talked about and linked to a few times in the wider fandom, so I suspect it was one of my more popular offerings...

Links and Updates

There's been some cool stuff coming out these past few weeks, and most of it has to do with girl power! (Yeah, that phrase is mostly obnoxious, but every now and then it takes me back to my nineties-self bopping around to the Spice Girls without a care in the world).

And for what it's worth, the previews below the cut do focus mainly on women, so consider it the theme of this post.

Meta: Defying the Fridge

I just finished the most fantastic book called The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente, which tackles the subject of Women in Refrigerators through the format of The Vagina Monologues.

I loved it. More of a novella than a fully-blown book, it's a collection of first-hand accounts from various female characters who don't make it to the end of the story – they're the girlfriends who die so their male counterparts can get motivated or be angsty or just get on with his superhero lifestyle without any distractions.

Most of my thoughts about will keep until my end of the month Reading Log, but for now I'll just say that you can tell it's written from a place of deep frustration, and this article by Valente explains her inspiration: watching the death of Gwen Stacey in The Amazing Spiderman 2.

Then I made the mistake of reading the comments. Amidst the usual snowflake pearl-clutching about how the feminist agenda is infecting literature and destroying lives, there was a depressingly repetitive refrain, used as justification for the death:

"Gwen Stacey always dies."

Gwen Stacey always dies. The words are spoken like it's an explanation in and of itself. That's like... the whole point, guys. That's her purpose; her reason for existence. She lives so she can die. It's hard to properly articulate why this mentality is so depressing.

Look, I'm not so daft as to believe female characters should be immune from death, but it's the frequency with which women perish, and the reasons for why they do so – but that's for another post entirely.

This post is actually a positive one. Below are a list of female characters who defied the fridge. Despite all the odds being stacked against them, despite foreshadowing and precedence and fandom expectations and even narrative inevitability, these women refused to be stuffed in that damn refrigerator.

Their places in these narratives aren't defined by the pain their deaths inflict on male characters – instead they are given the right to live and thrive and tell their own stories.

Woman of the Month: Princess Bean

Princess Bean from Disenchantment

Have you ever loved a character instantly and completely? It doesn't happen very often, but it happened to me when I saw the trailer for Disenchantment and caught my first glimpse of Princess Tiabeanie – or Bean for short.

Despite the medieval/fairy tale setting, Bean is very much a contemporary teenager on a quest for self-realization. Who is she? What does she want in life? These are the questions that haunt her, which means she initially has to put a lot of effort into avoiding her arranged marriage, rebelling against her father, and consuming lots of alcohol.

She captures the very essence of adolescence: spurts of great passion and drive followed by periods of apathy and antagonism. Ah, I remember it well.

It's too easy to contrast her to Matt Groening's other heroines, but the truth is Bean has nothing of Lisa's social conscience or Leela's brilliance. She's just a normal girl (complete with buck teeth!) whose normality is all the more marked due to her role as princess.

Yet the season's final few episodes suggest there may be more to her than meets the eye; that a destiny is in store for her whether she likes it or not. In which case, it bodes well that she has a good heart and tries – however haphazardly – to do the right thing.