Reading/Watching Log #61

At the end of this month, my New Year’s Resolution kicks into gear: no more library books. Instead, I have to focus on the hundreds and hundreds of books that I own that have been languishing on my shelves for the last ten-plus years. So this month was a last hurrah for books from the library (okay, one book and a series of graphic novels is going to carry on into February) before I seriously start delving into my own collection.

There are plenty of graphic novels under the cut, along with yet another superhero show (I will get to Crisis on Infinite Earths, I WILL), two Jungle Books, the latest Wonder Woman, the final season of Vikings and Trollhunters, and offerings from both Diana Wynne Jones and Philip Pullman…

Legend of the Seeker: Elixir

The one where... actually, there’s not much going on in this episode.

There I was, thinking our protagonists were headed straight to Calabra, only to find out that I had absolutely no memory of this minor detour. And it’s no wonder, as absolutely nothing of note happens here, unless you want to count some insight into Kahlan’s powers, which gets repeated in the next episode anyway. You can skip this one and miss nothing, so I’ll keep this brief...

Legend of the Seeker: Listener

The one with the annoying kid.

Sooner or later, every genre show or franchise will introduce a kid. Buffy/Angel had Dawn and Connor. Star Wars had Jake Lloyd’s Anakin Skywalker. The 100 had Madi. Charmed had a whole half-season with Jenny Gordon, the kid living next door to the Halliwell sisters who was apparently meant to get a witch-in-training subplot before the writers abruptly jettisoned it (and her).

It’s never a good sign, so Legend of the Seeker decided to get it over with quickly, deal with the kid and then never see or mention him ever again. Which hey, is one way of dealing with the problem. And okay, Renn isn’t actually that bad – I can understand that he’s a product of his upbringing, and he does improve as the episode goes on... but still, it’s best not to dwell too long on annoying kids.

Xena Warrior Princess: Forget Me Not, Finns, Femmes and Gems, Tsunami

Our next round of Xena Warrior Princess episodes cover some familiar ground in more ways than one: we get a rare example of a clip-show that justifies its own existence by providing new perspectives to old material, another wacky hijinks comedy, and another riff on a pre-existing story (in this case, a disaster at sea). Still, we're in the midst of season three, and the writers are firing on all cylinders. Even the less-than-impressive offerings are still a lot of fun to watch.

Links and Updates

We’re barely two weeks into 2021 and it’s already proving to be a total headache. I’ve never been happier to not be on Twitter than I am today, though all the right-wing complaints about how their follower counts have dropped in the wake of an armed insurrection and five deaths certainly puts their priorities into perspective.

Still, at least a certain someone made history by becoming the only president to ever be impeached twice, and if anything good can come out of January 6th, it’s hopefully that society will finally start treating white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, and other right-wing terrorists as the threats they are. They’re pathetic, but armed losers are still armed.

And for the record, New Zealand isn’t perfect either. Yesterday our own homegrown conspiracy nutter/cult leader led about a hundred people to government buildings to protest against lockdown and support old Trumpy. Somehow it’s even stupider here than it was in America, since... well, it’s not like they can vote for him. And why are they protesting against lockdowns anyway? Our one and only national lockdown happened almost a year ago!

The stupid, it hurts. Let’s look at stuff that’s coming up instead...

Top Twelve Best Film/Television Moments of 2020

Well... that was certainly something. I’ve no idea how to sum up what we just witnessed taking place in America this week, so I’m not going to try.

For all intents and purposes, this is meant to be a pop-culture blog, but even within that limited sphere of interest it was a pretty awful year. The pandemic robbed us of several big-screen releases, J.K. Rowling went full-transphobe on Twitter, and Chadwick Boseman passed away from cancer, a tragedy that shook everyone (especially given his young age) and which casts a pall over the future of the Black Panther franchise.

We also lost Diana Rigg and Max von Sydow (though in those cases you couldn’t say they hadn’t enjoyed long and rewarding lives) and the Black Lives Matter resurgence in May meant that many harrowing accounts of what it’s like to be a Black performer in the entertainment industry emerged.

Of particular interest to me (given the projects they were a part of) were the stories shared by John Boyega, Nicole Beharie and Mehcad Brooks, whose experiences on Star Wars, Sleepy Hollow and Supergirl are eerily similar: all were playing characters that were initially held up as the co-lead of a franchise, each one had romantic chemistry with their white co-star, and all were eventually side-lined in favour of white replacements.

Boyega was reduced to a sidekick, Beharie was written out of the show, and Brooks’s material became so measly that he eventually quit. All three of them have described racial discrimination from both the fandom and in front of the cameras. It’s not a coincidence, it’s a pervasive and insidious pattern that continues to play out whenever racism gets the better of the writers’ room. And the stupidest part? Their marginalization literally hurt the quality of the story itself.

Finally, two cult series came to an end this year, with no small amount of controversy: The 100 and Supernatural each chose to kill off a main character in a remarkably stupid way and go out flipping the bird at devoted long-term shippers, meaning that both shows will certainly live on in infamy, and providing more examples of why writing for Twitter trends is a bad idea, especially if you have no intention of following up on the bait that you dangle.

So yeah, a lot of shit to wade through this year. But for what it’s worth, this annual post is to highlight some of the best on-screen moments of 2020, whether on television or (with safety measures in place, obviously) the big screen...

Women of the Year: A Retrospective 2020

If you’re reading this, then you survived 2020. Congratulations. It was a year that’ll be defined by the Coronavirus pandemic and the lengths we all went to in trying to contain its spread, the consequences of which will be felt for years to come. Several weeks were spent in lockdown, which afforded us all one sliver of a silver lining: time to catch up on our backlog of reading and viewing material.

Wherever you are in the world, I hope you had a satisfying Christmas and New Year, even if it was considerably more low-key than usual.

As you may remember (as I’ve brought it up enough times) my profound weariness with the way female characters were treated throughout 2019 inspired my New Year’s Resolution: that I would try to focus on women-created and women-led media for the duration of 2020. For the most part I stuck to this promise, seeking out material that I might not have even heard of without this prerequisite, and it was rewarding to not only discover so many new stories and great female characters, but also revisit plenty of my own favourites.

The twelve most significant heroines of the year were featured in my Woman of the Month series, but there are always plenty more that are notable for their charm, complexity, uniqueness, and tenacity. They all got me through this year...

Woman of the Month: Mebh Óg MacTíre

Look at this magnificent creature. LOOK AT HER. I don’t think I’ve ever loved a character design as deeply or as instantly as I have Mebh (pronounced Maeve). Her design is impeccable: the roundness of her body, the fullness of her hair, the sharpness of her teeth: her entire personality is bursting through the lines that make up her being.

She’s a Wolfwalker, living in the forests of Ireland with her mother, able to transform into a wolf while she sleeps, and using her healing abilities on humans and animals alike. Now with her mother gone in order to find a safer place to live, Mebh has only the wolf pack for company... until she meets Robyn Goodfellowe...

Mebh instantly became one of my favourite fictional characters of all time: she’s fierce and feral and a ball of energy that practically pulsates with life. She moves with a swagger and confidence that’s so rare in female characters; raising her voice and taking up space, but finding so much joy in who she is and what she loves: her forest, her pack and her mother.

And yet, she’s still a little girl. More vulnerable than she realizes and desperately missing her absent “mammy”, you’ll end up choking back tears when she verbalizes her loneliness and fear. Children don’t do things by half: when they’re upset their hearts break, when they love it’s with their entire being, and when they’re afraid it’s like the whole world is crumbling around them.

But as she says to Robyn: “there’s two of us now”, the arc words that guide the flow of the film’s action and its central themes. Even a self-sufficient wolf-child needs a little help now and then.