Vicissitude and Season

From Give Me My Remote:

As she beats up an 18th-century colonel, Ichabod watches a video in which he and Abbie attempt to take a selfie and talk about waffles. This scene is the only thing you need to know about SLEEPY HOLLOW.

THANK YOU SHOW, YOU ARE BACK. If awkwardly, at the end of a pretty terrible season, with questionable time travel practices. (Well, magic. *handwaves*) I guess we don't know about renewal yet, but if this is the end, a nice mirror-image reboot is a good way to go about it.

More soon, since I haven't posted in a while, but I'm glad I went ahead and watched the SH finale (I was kind of dreading them messing it up).

Well, lots of things happening on January 6, anyway:

- Snow!!
- Foxglove Summer out in the U.S. and on my Kindle! Lots of stuff to get done before I can read it, alas.
- New Person of Interest tonight! Looks to be a very interestingly-structured episode and a hell of a cliffhanger.
- Sherlock Holmes's birthday, if one cares to celebrate that.
- Last day for the Christmas tree (and the Christmas Penguin, outside).

Also, Sleepy Hollow last night… !!!

Yesterday was apparently National Bird Day and I did a little author blog post on that and the bird thing in my books - pretty much what some of you have read here already. Also it was Twelfth Night, of course.

1) I put together a FAQ for my books, mostly spurred by having to make that "check the box or not?" decision again for "adult content." I did not check the box. Here's the relevant portion of the FAQ:

( situationally-appropriate )


I think this is all reasonable, but there's bound to be someone out there who gets huffy. Difficult sometimes to remember that not all the world reads E-rated fanfic on a regular basis and thinks my writing is tame. :)

2) I am having trouble being quite as enthused about season two of Sleepy Hollow as I was about season one, and I'm afraid it has to do with Katrina. It's very hard to express dislike for her without being one of those "gets in the way of my ship!" people, and while I do kind of ship Ichabod/Abbie, I would love Katrina to be a great character instead of the inconsistently written and acted mess that she is. She could be both the love of Ichabod's life and a person causing him great consternation; she could be both badass and ladylike; she could be smart as hell and still confused by her confusing circumstances; she could be motherly and passionate and jealous, and conflicted about those feelings. There's plenty of room for fascinating development along all those axes of character, but instead she's tossed arbitrarily from one side to another, never gets to be fully competent at anything, never gets to be as funny as the other characters, is often a victim and more frequently stupid, has marvelously unclear motivations, and keeps wearing an outfit you'd think she would toss in the trash immediately. And she's been the focus of a lot of episodes this season, so all this is unfortunately front and center.

Also, not nearly enough Frank Irving is happening, but we knew that.

3) Bad POI fan here: dozed off here and there during last night's episode and missed both Bear's swimming and the bit about the circle (which I know about from browsing Tumblr), so I will have to watch it again. It's not the show; it's me and my previous night's insomnia. But I did wake up for the ending and look forward to mayhem ensuing next week. And I didn't snore as much as Fusco.

I cleverly scheduled brewsternorth's request "Things you like/are looking forward to about Sleepy Hollow" two days after the finale, which would be tomorrow, but I'm going to answer it today because WHEEEE. In other words, the delightfulness is fresh in memory, as is the HORRIBLE OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU DO THAT cliffhanger.

I wasn't prepared to like Sleepy Hollow. As I posted a few days ago, my suspension of disbelief is fully functioning, but there are limits, and this show seemed like it was going to push them (like, out of a skyscraper), and I'm still mad at them for the Middle English thing but… you know, never mind. I can take retconning of American history for Secret Battle Against Evil purposes, and certainly I can manage witches and demons and resurrections and all that, because after all I've done vampires and werewolves and Slayers. The comparisons between Sleepy Hollow and Buffy are pretty obvious; it's just that SH hung up the apocalyptic window dressing a lot sooner. But both shows depend on the chemistry and likability of the leads - they even both have a pleasant British accent dryly commenting on the action! - on teamwork and friendship, on snark, and on tapping a deep essence of what it means to be human, more than they do on the supernatural-heavy plot elements, even if there'd be no show without them. Both of them can be total camp one minute and then get serious the next. And I'm expecting to see an overall evolution from silly to deep on SH as well, hopefully without losing any of the entertaining banter.

The obvious difference, and what's given SH a lot of its press, is the casting; how half of the leads (I'd say more, because despite the opening credits Jenny is a lot more prominent on the show now than Katrina) and a lot of the supporting cast members are non-white, which is great and really refreshing on network TV. It's worth noting, too, that of the main cast the only obvious immigrant is Ichabod himself, and he's an immigrant twice over. So they can play a bit with what would be a really painful stereotype if it was, say, rural Guatemalan comes to live in the U.S. and is baffled by computers and donut holes. Looking at this from the perspective of a time travel writer, of course, that didn't occur to me for a long time; I was too busy enjoying how Ichabod adjusts to the 21st century (the voice mails! I will never not be in love with the voice mails. And in the finale, you can see that Abbie's enchanted by them too, and then he starts complaining that his phone isn't the latest upgrade, oh man, you are part of our century now. And the skinny jeans. And Starbucks. Etc. It's actually a brilliant way of showing how foolish our reality is, which perhaps makes the more spooky part of their reality less ridiculous? After all, it's all magic to Ichabod). They may still be trying either too hard or not hard enough on the social aspects, but they bring up things like race and slavery and sexism and the hypocrisy of the Founding Fathers, which is, again, refreshing.

I haven't dipped into fanfic for SH yet (maybe I'll write some! that could be fun) but I'm assuming that it's one of those shows where slash takes a back seat to the obviousness of the Ichabod/Abbie pairing. Which… I am of two minds about. On the one hand, YES, but… well, first of all, Ichabod's married, even if his wife is a witch and neglected to tell him that and has been trapped in purgatory for centuries and I don't really like her that much. And secondly, I enjoy them as friends and colleagues ("colleagues" is putting it mildly. Fellow Witnesses Preventing the End of the World; stamp it on the letterhead). They are, in fact, absolutely delightful together, without adding even a hint of UST, although it's certainly there. And Abbie is a Strong Woman in that nice complicated sense that means she has a lot of vulnerabilities that don't get fixed by being in love with a man or having a man love her (though many of them seem to, and why wouldn't they). When she talks about loving and losing, it's about her sister and her parents and Sheriff Corbin, and it's her reunion with Jenny that hits the high emotional mark for the season. And that's fantastic. (I found the temptations she and Ichabod faced in the finale really interesting in that respect, but… spoilers.)

Then there are the Irvings, and… how wonderful are they? And I love how beautifully conflicted Frank Irving is, in his evolution through the whole season, right through to his actions in the finale, and how they tie up what might have been A and B plots into a near-seamless whole. (Also, Orlando Jones's full-throttle venture into fandom is delightful in its own regard. But that's a side benefit, akin to the benefit of getting to admire Tom Mison every week.)

I'm not even sure what I'm looking forward to, except more of the same but even better, and did I mention the HORRIBLE OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU DO THAT cliffhanger? Fall 2014 - how are we supposed to wait that long?

First of all: oh, thank goodness. I really enjoyed Person of Interest last night; that is the show I've been looking for. WELCOME BACK, BABY. Oh, Shaw who has a heart hidden in there somewhere. And OMG Carter you badass.

In other TV news, my usual Tuesday afternoon exhaustion yesterday (I work really hard in a garden all morning, this time complicated by my hanging-on cold and chilly rain) led to sampling the first two eps of Sleepy Hollow, which I'd heard good things about. I like it, though I'm not sure I'll keep watching. It's one of those shows where you have to suspend disbelief hard, hard enough to... concentrate your mind wonderfully, and in this case I'm having difficulty. (And there are many other shows out there, and time is at a premium, etc.) I do love Abbie, though, and Crane is very restful on the eyes and ears. We'll see. Just... Horsemen of the Apocalypse, really?

The Good Wife is fantastic this season. I am fingernails-in-palms till next episode. Figuratively, or else I'd have trouble typing this. And boy, no horsemen at all, just law firm drama.

Have not watched White Collar premiere yet, nor any Castle; still slowly working through Breaking Bad.

We are traveling a lot this fall: Allentown this weekend, Houston two weeks later, Allentown and Massachusetts Thanksgiving week. Somehow in the middle of all that (and starting to prep next year's MG events already) I am still determined to bring out a book. Possibly not in time for maximizing Christmas sales, but I'm not sure it matters all that much. I'll do it when I can do it; there are significant dates it would be fun to aim for, but November 22 I'll be on the road and December 16 is... well, not too late really. Again, we'll see. (I think the next one coming out on April 30 would be amusing. It makes my already-filling-up calendar insane, but whatever. *makes note to get flu shot*) Meanwhile, I am sorting through teacup photos and hoping to launch a website... next week?

LET'S SEE WHAT HAPPENS, THANK YOU GREGOR.