lifeonqueen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lifeonqueen) wrote2009-12-10 07:32 pm
lifeonqueen) wrote2009-12-10 07:32 pm
Love, Hate and Something Inbetween (The Genre Edition)
· Things I really kinda love - Amanda Tapping & SANCTUARY:
Tapping is charming as hell and Helen Magnus is a different kind of SF badass - both explicitly feminine and explicitly hardcore (like Scully if Scully had been allowed to actually have balls?). SANCTUARY has not always avoided the pitfalls of genrefail but the show's premise - that diversity is valuable in itself & worth protecting - is a refreshing change from 'kill the monster/alien' SF and so typically Canadian that the very idea makes me grin.
· Things I kinda hate: Katee Sackhoff and other actors/fanbait writing comic books.
I've read comic books for over 30 years (eep!) and it's not something just anyone can do. The rapid repacking of high-profile monthly titles into six or eight-issue trade paperbacks disguised the fact that Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men was largely awful, unreadable as a monthly, suffering from poor pacing and tiresome exposition. Kevin Smith, while slightly better at writing for the medium, was congenitally unable to meet a deadline. And don't even get me started on Peter Petrelli and his "please make this into a movie" vanity project. The good comics out there (and there are a few - some of them are even published by Marvel/DC) have one thing in common - the writers write primarily (although not necessarily exclusively) for comics. Because distilling a story into chunks of 22 visual pages is a skill just like any other technical understaking - it's not something you can do just because you read Betty and Veronica or Detective Comics as a kid.
· Things I'm kinda undecided about - Riese the Series:
For starters, it insists on calling itself Riese the Series, a title which feels like if it isn't some sort of taxonomical party foul, it should be. For seconds, our hero, Riese, is protected by her wolf companion, Fenrir, and I have a rule about "no telepathic pets" in my entertainment. I don't even like Pets of Special Narrative Significance and let's face it: companion wolves? Done to death.
That said, Riese the Series, a Vancouver-based web series about a mysterious wanderer in a strange steam-punky world is sort of interesting, if mostly in a "name that Stargate/Smallville/Sanctuary/BSG actor" way. The first "chapter" is broken up into five or so installments, released on youtube at two week intervals. We're up to episode three and soon, I hope, something will actually happen.
I feel slightly guilty crabbing about Riese the Series. I admire the creators' initiative and the use of the internet to create new and different stories (SANCTUARY also started life as a web series and the two projects share a determination to tack away from standard genre asethetics) but Riese the Series has yet to nail down my interest.
Maybe it needs more wolf.
Tapping is charming as hell and Helen Magnus is a different kind of SF badass - both explicitly feminine and explicitly hardcore (like Scully if Scully had been allowed to actually have balls?). SANCTUARY has not always avoided the pitfalls of genrefail but the show's premise - that diversity is valuable in itself & worth protecting - is a refreshing change from 'kill the monster/alien' SF and so typically Canadian that the very idea makes me grin.
· Things I kinda hate: Katee Sackhoff and other actors/fanbait writing comic books.
I've read comic books for over 30 years (eep!) and it's not something just anyone can do. The rapid repacking of high-profile monthly titles into six or eight-issue trade paperbacks disguised the fact that Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men was largely awful, unreadable as a monthly, suffering from poor pacing and tiresome exposition. Kevin Smith, while slightly better at writing for the medium, was congenitally unable to meet a deadline. And don't even get me started on Peter Petrelli and his "please make this into a movie" vanity project. The good comics out there (and there are a few - some of them are even published by Marvel/DC) have one thing in common - the writers write primarily (although not necessarily exclusively) for comics. Because distilling a story into chunks of 22 visual pages is a skill just like any other technical understaking - it's not something you can do just because you read Betty and Veronica or Detective Comics as a kid.
· Things I'm kinda undecided about - Riese the Series:
For starters, it insists on calling itself Riese the Series, a title which feels like if it isn't some sort of taxonomical party foul, it should be. For seconds, our hero, Riese, is protected by her wolf companion, Fenrir, and I have a rule about "no telepathic pets" in my entertainment. I don't even like Pets of Special Narrative Significance and let's face it: companion wolves? Done to death.
That said, Riese the Series, a Vancouver-based web series about a mysterious wanderer in a strange steam-punky world is sort of interesting, if mostly in a "name that Stargate/Smallville/Sanctuary/BSG actor" way. The first "chapter" is broken up into five or so installments, released on youtube at two week intervals. We're up to episode three and soon, I hope, something will actually happen.
I feel slightly guilty crabbing about Riese the Series. I admire the creators' initiative and the use of the internet to create new and different stories (SANCTUARY also started life as a web series and the two projects share a determination to tack away from standard genre asethetics) but Riese the Series has yet to nail down my interest.
Maybe it needs more wolf.