Category: tv

Between the lines

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 8 Comments

One fandom activity I don’t like seeing and don’t enjoy doing is nit-picking plot holes. All fictional works have them, but some people relish the idea of pointing them out and castigating the writers of the fictional work. They relish complaining. Television is especially vulnerable to this because of tight writing schedules and multiple authors.

I hate nit-picking because I don’t like plot holes, they ruin my enjoyment of a book/show/film considerably, and I’d just as soon spackle over them and move on rather than grouse for fun and profit. Back in the hey-day of the ATPo board, we used to spend a portion of our time “spackling” BtVS and AtS plot holes using show canon or well-accepted fanon. We’d pack the hole with speculation, likely or unlikely, and end the post with “spackle, spackle” as a tongue-in-cheek wink to other posters (especially if our hole-filler was a stretch).

I suppose most plothole-filling in fandom occurs in spackle!fic rather than “meta.” And probably more convincingly as well, since fiction is a more visceral medium for making a case.

Regardless of how it’s done, spackling can work surprisingly well for the fan willing to put in the ThinksTooMuch time, because ofttimes the apparently dangling plot point was, in fact, established by the writers, just weakly, or in ways that were obvious to them but not to the viewers.

I am thinking of this today because one of the worst kind of plot holes there is is weakly-developed motivation in a character-driven story.

Regina on OUAT (spoilers to last night’s episode)

Introductory post

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 30 Comments

I don’t think I’ve ever done an introductory post before, seeing as I’ve known most of my flist for years and have survived internet kerfuffles, raging forest fires, and DoubleMeat Palace viewings with them. But I recently gained a few new flisties from a Merlin fandom friending meme and apparently an introductory post after that is what All the Cool Kids Do.

So if you know this stuff already, feel free to move along.

Masquerade the Philosopher: a primer

The real meaning of “Meta”

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 8 Comments

Okay, this is exactly why I get so annoyed when fandom refers to the writing of any commentary on a show or book that isn’t itself story-telling (i.e., fan-fiction), as “meta”. Witness: last night’s episode of Once Upon a Time.

In a previous episode, the Mayor (AKA Evil Queen in the Fairytaleverse) found the “Once Upon a Time” book her son Henry had hidden from her. He has carried this prop around for the entire season. It tells the true story of everyone’s real lives back in the Fairytaleverse. Its very existence as a prop on the television show OUAT is an example of “meta”–when a story breaks the fourth wall in that subtle, non-intrusive way, and exposes itself as a story.

The Mayor destroys the book. Or tries to. But then, lo, a newcomer comes to town. He has a mysterious box. In the box, we discover, is a typewriter. This identifies him as a writer, and a more or less contemporary writer at that. Now one aspect of the OUAT television show they have mentioned repeatedly is that these characters, ostensibly modern, contemporary people, are trapped in the town of Storybrooke. They never leave, not because they can’t, necessarily*, but because no one really has a mind to. Likewise, outsiders entering the town is a strange thing. Other than Emma Swan, who as we know, is not really an outsider at all–being the biological daughter of two residents of Storybrooke–no one is new. It is a bubble-prison of the Mayor’s making*.

This week, we saw the writer repairing the tattered remnants of the story book–drying them off, weaving them back into a proper binding, then leaving it for Emma to find. This shows that the writer is, in fact, the Writer, a self-insertion of the series writers themselves, entering the story and mending it, mending hope that the spell will be broken and their old lives returned. It is absolutely necessary to the concept of “meta” that the writer be an outsider to the town. He is not part of the story. Not part of Storybrooke. He is outside the story, outside the book, mending it, weaving it.

* I found the previews for the next episode interesting. Spoilers

Finished Peacekeeper Wars

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 4 Comments

Okay, I admit I sniffled at the end. But something about the… style of this series always got a little under my craw. Too chaotic too much of the time. Still, it had its moments. And it had a good ending, which seems rare nowadays.

Rygel? Still gross. Seriously, why did the show require *that* much puking? (and farting… and belching….)

But they win points for spoiler

Once Upon a Time links

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 44 Comments

How/Why the Evil Queen became evil (no real spoilers, just the teasy promise that the question will be answered soon):

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Once-Upon-Time-Lana-Parrilla-1041311.aspx

One thing is clear, the Mayor isn’t going to be brought down anytime soon. The long-term arc of the show is about her defeat. But hopefully the background reveals will make her a bit more gray than black and white.

How the TV show Lost influenced OUAT’s fairytale world:

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Once-Upon-Time-Horowitz-Kitsis-1040425.aspx

“We never thought about Lost or Once really as mythology shows, even though mythology obviously is a part of [both]. They are character shows to us. “

Sounds like they’re developing a mythology for the show through both the actual text of fairy tales and their own development of the characters as both fairy tale characters and modern people. Storybrooke is the Island where they are trapped, and the people in it are gradually revealed through non-linear flashbacks.

So far, I trust what they’re doing, and where they might go. If it’s anything like Lost, it should be a twisty, turny ride.

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Fannish opinion

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 30 Comments

I’m not a big fan of “breaking the fourth wall” in fiction. Sometimes it can be used effectively, when it’s subtle, but most of the time it is done tongue-in-cheek, as a joke by the writers to say, “Hey, it’s only a TV show, hee hee!”, which totally throws the viewer out of the suspension of disbelief that gives fiction its magic.

I think there is a difference between breaking the fourth wall and a show (or other extended work of fiction) satirizing/parodying itself. “The Zeppo” is an effective example of a show satirizing itself without breaking the fourth wall. It’s a subtler form of what most cases of actually breaking the fourth wall are trying to achieve and end up failing at.

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Legalities

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 28 Comments

So what I’d like to know is what the legal definition of “an original series” is. Syfy Network in the U.S. has the audacity to call shows like Merlin and Lost Girl “original series”, and we all know Syfy didn’t commission these shows to be produced in the first place.

Not to mention they don’t air on Syfy until long after the rest of the world has seen them. Reminds me of Cordelia to Harmony back in the day: “You do what everyone else does just so you can say you did it first!”

In other news: All Things Philosophical has gone black today in protest of SOPA.

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