Discussion Lost in a Good Fic -- The Well of Lost Plots Social Thread

Sith-I-5 Sounds fun! I really need to watch more Archer... I've only seen a couple episodes, back when it first started.

Mira_Jade Hahaha, awesome about the football game! Moving is kinda horrible. Worst part was that my partner and I bought internet for our new apartment and it took a week and a half for them to send it to us. I know it's the start of the school year and so many students are moving in, but come on...

 

I look forward to getting multiple reviews on something, however, don't get your hopes too high.

I have also been alerted to a month's deadline on a fanon challenge fic for the other forum, so will be focussing my efforts there for now,

 

Anyone here watch the SyFy tv series Dark Matter? I really liked the first season, but the second season isn't making me very happy.

 

Tarsier OMG YES! I watched the first season with my partner a couple months ago. I started the second season last month but didn't get too far. While I appreciate the creators wanting to abandon the "leave a lot of mystery to be solved" thing (ala LOST) behind, I feel like the pacing is kind of... wonky. Like mysteries get solved way too quickly. I feel like they could slow down a little bit so they could actually concentrate on developing their characters instead of just having surface level stuff... and then more surface level stuff... and then MORE surface level stuff... What do you think?

Sith-I-5 Something I've noticed in the past couple years (not necessarily on this site, but definitely on the major fan fiction sites like ff.net and ao3) is that readers are becoming less and less inclined to comment or leave reviews. A03's kudos system offers an alternative to leaving reviews, but even then... it's kind of like a lot of people find it too troublesome to leave a note. I dunno.

 

Idrelle_Miocovani Yay, someone else who knows the show! I pretty much agree, although I'm most unhappy about...

Spoiler

...killing off One. What the heck? I thought he was like the main character, with so much potential to explore. But it seemed like the writers just got tired of him, suddenly? I don't know, just seemed like a weird decision. (You can probably guess, he's one of my favorite characters.)

Also, "upgraded" Android is kinda creeping me out. I definitely prefer her first season persona.

And then the new characters aren't doing much for me. Basically a clone of Two. And then the criminal/medic who's addicted to prescription drugs (how original!) - somebody thought that was a more compelling story than the businessman trying to fit in with mercenaries without compromising his morals? (Okay, mostly I'm just bitter about One.)

As for the pacing (I've only seen the first five episodes of Season Two) - I think the show has always moved at a really brisk pace (borderline too brisk) and that's definitely carried over into the second season. I agree the second season seems like a good time to slow down really delve into characters and relationships, but instead the show just constantly adds and subtracts characters (instead of picking a few to focus on) and as you said, comes up with crazy problems to be quickly solved, always keeping it very shallow. So overall, I guess I feel it's just disappointing - wasting its potential.

 

Tarsier

Spoiler

Oh, I know...It was such a strange decision. And it made very little narrative sense--One was built up to be either the protagonist or the deuteragonist with Two. His narrative arc was just starting to get going (especially after he found out about his past/his wife's murder, and then...He's gone? Done? It was extremely unsatisfying. I stopped watching since I was having a hard time getting used to the new characters. The original cast was large and I feel like I don't know them well enough, and now we have even more new people, someone of whom feel like repeats? I don't get it.

I agree that the pacing is borderline too brisk. It's kind of strange, since I've never seen that in a TV show anywhere. It did have a lot of potential--I know it's opposite to what the creator wanted to do, but I think the whole original mystery of "we don't know our identities and we're stuck on a ship" could have lasted an entire season instead of... half the pilot episode.

(I do appreciate that it has ties to Stargate though... I laughed when David Hewlett showed up and could barely contain my glee. Same thing happened when Wil Wheaton showed up.)

 

I feel like there is trend in tv towards a faster and faster pace, although I think Dark Matter is probably the fastest I've seen.

Yeah, perhaps that should have been a warning to me. I both love and hate Stargate. I remember thoroughly enjoying the first seasons of SG-1 when it was on the air, but I recently tried to rewatch it from the beginning and I just didn't think the first few episodes were very good. I'm sure there are still episodes I would enjoy, I just need to find them. Then there's Atlantis - the first two or three seasons are among my favorite tv shows ever, but at some point things just went so far downhill. They kept killing my favorite characters and replacing them with characters I can't stand. And both SG-1 and Atlantis had this maddening tendency to go to great lengths to bring a dead character back to life... just to kill them again by the end of the episode. I swear sometimes it felt like the writers were just trying to make me angry.... But anyway, I also really enjoyed seeing David Hewlett (and Torri Higginson!) on Dark Matter. I wish those characters would get more screen time.

 

I think that's a trend almost everywhere... movies are getting slowly shorter (except when someone really insists on putting out a 3 hour epic), theatre is definitely focused on shorter work (it's hard to get anything over the 75 min mark produced these days, unless you're a big Broadway musical or Harry Potter and the Cursed Child). It's like art everywhere is focused on producing things more and more concisely out of fear of losing their audience to a competitor, but concise does not necessarily equal well-written or well-executed.

I couldn't watch the early seasons of SG-1, so I didn't really get into the later seasons. My Stargate heart lies with Atlantis. There are some real quality episodes there (like "Sunday", which is then ruined by the Beckett clone showing up later...). I can understand--from a production standpoint--the draw of bringing fan favourite characters back from the dead so the fans can enjoy more of them, but there's a point where it either becomes ridiculous or just ruins the narrative that was already established (*cough*Supernatural*cough*).

((I totally forgot about Torri Higginson being on Dark Matter, but that's right! (Which is strange, because I remember when we watched her first episode, my partner literally shouted "TORRI HIGGINSON!!"). ))

 

Mira_Jade I still think the first season of Dark Matter is worth watching. There's clearly more story to be told at then end of the season, but I wouldn't say it ends on a cliffhanger or anything. A lot of questions are answered in the first season, and there's a big mystery starting from the first episode that I think is satisfyingly resolved in the last few seconds of the season finale. (And I wouldn't worry too much about the blistering pace - if you like TURN, I don't think Dark Matter moves too much faster than that show, and Dark Matter has fewer characters and less complicated plots (in my opinion anyway, YMMV of course).) Then after Season One, you can make up your own continuation, look to fanfic, or start Season Two expecting to be disappointed - maybe you'll be surprised and like it more than we did!

 

But Mira, explosions are PRETTY!

The industry is extremely competitive, and that competition ends up feeling like producers all want to make the same story, with the same characters, just bigger and better than other producers making the same story, with the same characters... When something dares to actually break the status quo, that's when I get interested. Doesn't matter if it's low-budget, got cancelled too early, or whatever. Do something different from the mainstream and I am there for that.

There's a lot of pressure to give up the story you want to write in favour of the story that you/your producers think will sell best and get the most bums in seats (or views on Netflix and such). And try however hard you might, those works will always pale in comparison to those that are free themselves from that mentality (look at Deadpool, which is now my favourite superhero movie because it was so different and unexpected though they had massive budget cuts, they just went for it, regardless of what they thought audiences wanted. And it was awesome.)

Maybe you've had a bad run with entertainment, but if so, then I feel like I have too. I've been having a bad run with theatre, too. When I was in London, most of the shows I saw (even at places like the National Theatre and Shakespeare's Globe) were really good, but they were really good in the expected way. Nothing was mindblowing. And then there was the crappiest show I have ever seen in my life, that somehow got a full month production in London because the playwright had good connections for funding. (It was a weird story inspired by real events happening to refugees, but it was set in a post-apocalyptic Europe and the refugees were British and the US had burnt down and the UK had fractured into right-wing militant Christian kingdoms and mainland Europe was using British refugees as sex slaves--it was weird. It was so freakin' WEIRD, BELIEVE ME). And don't even get me started on Cursed Child. Makes things like Hamilton a fresh breath of air (I swear, we're not going to see something so sophisticated in the theatre for a real long time...)

I agree with Tarsier about the first season of Dark Matter. It is really interesting, even if it doesn't live up to its full potential--it is worth a watch if you're looking for something new!

 

It's OK. Embrace your grumpiness. It's what I have to do, otherwise I'd have to go live under and rock. I saw a production of Spamalot last week and grumped straight through it (my partner politely told me to stop trying to analyze it, but it's so hard to turn off the grad school brain once it's been flicked on!).

It's the concept of "well, that specific way of doing it before worked out really well (i.e. made us a lot of money), so let's do it again". The idea of there's nothing new under the sun is interesting--what I've found (especially after teaching a writing class) is that there are only so many general set-ups, but if every writer tackles it in their own way, instead of trying to imitate someone else's way because it "worked", it is going to end up being unique because only you can write your story the way you want. The set-up for Harry Potter isn't too unique, but you can't say that there's another Harry Potter out there.

Oooh! Poldark! I've seen a lot of gifsets of it on my tumblr dash. Haven't had the time to look it up (I've also been meaning to watch Vikings for a very long time now...), but I'll put it on my list. My partner is taking some time off, so we're looking for new things to watch together. I've already suggested Stranger Things since I haven't seen it yet!

Has anyone seen Galavant? (Basically fantasy musical comedy that snarkily pokes fun at fantasy tropes and has music written by Alan Menken!)

 

Despite it muscling in front of the ST/Archer project, and a fic dead lined for 19 days time, as well as causing me to fall asleep at the keyboard, leaving me with a bad back; I am pleased as punch to have gotten a Necroscope update done.

 

Mira_Jade Oh, TURN. (I just quickly skimmed your comments because I haven't started Season 3 yet - sounds like maybe Season 3 takes a turn for the worse?) It's just so darn entertaining, it's hard to stop watching once you start. I'm not a history buff, and I'm holding off on reading the book, so I try to view it as purely historical fiction. Once I get through Season 3 I'm going to read the book and try to sort fact from fiction, but in the meantime I'm mostly just enjoying the ride. (Though I completely agree with you that it would be nice if they would stick to at least the interesting parts of history.) And since you mention Simcoe - I assume the historical figure was not much like the character. (That character...I could go about him for a long time, except that I don't even know where to start.) My dad thinks that one of the writers must just really hate Toronto.

 

Tarsier I wouldn't blame the writers if one of them hated Toronto. Everyone hates Toronto. Except for Torontonians.

Mira_Jade Oh, so THAT'S what you did before the show. (London's an interesting town--it's kind of cute and has some interesting stuff, but I just find it mildly unimpressive because I grew up in the area so therefore it's automatically "boring"). Simcoe's interesting. He named a lake after his dad. Still, I'd take him over General Isaac Brock any day (if anyone says a word about the War of 1812, I will SCREAM--side effect of living the Niagara area during the bicentennial, everyone was War of 1812 obsessed I had to make art and drama about it for work).

Now I want to watch TURN, regardless of the quality...

I think we've had this Vikings conversation before? I'm getting deja-vu. Sucks about the later seasons. I mostly want to watch for Lagertha, she looks awesome.

It's good you've watched Galavant! It's cancelled now, but apparently Netflix says they will fund a third season or a movie if it gets enough views. I love the second season, particularly with how salty they were that they didn't get any Emmy noms for the original music in season one. So they did primarily parodies of famous songs from musicals (my favourites are Sid's Les Mis-inspired song, and the time Galavant parodied "Kiss the Girl", because Alan Menken is the composer and wrote it to make fun of himself ).

 

Mira_Jade Yes! He named a lake after his dad. Lake Simcoe. How original. Mind you, it already had a name before that (Lake Toronto, but the Huron name is Ouentironk). It's actually a pretty nice lake, but it kind of gets overshadowed by the fact that it's near Lake Huron.

I want Lagertha's hair. End of story.

So much of the TV I watch is always trying to be "dark" and "serious" and "gritty", it's nice to have a break and go into a campy fantasy trope-filled world. And even though all the characters are pretty much one-dimensional on purpose, there's a lot of heart and quite a few meaningful relationships and friendships (I love Richard's development in season 2).

Oh! And just started watching Stranger Things. I got to episode 5 before falling asleep last night. It's sooooo good. And the kid cast! They're honestly the best thing and extremely talented.

 

Mira_Jade Someone pointed out that all of the groupings of main characters are in their own genre (the kids are in sci-fi/fantasy, Nancy and Jonathan are in highschool horror, Joyce and Hopper are in a police drama/mystery) and that the true mystery can't be solved/dealt with until all of the different groups come together. It was really fascinating structure and execution. And everyone was so spot on. The kids did a radio interview a while ago and apparently Daniel Radcliffe told them how much he liked the show and how he thought they were all better actors than he was when he was their age and Millie Bobby Brown basically went, "But... you... you're Harry Potter."

Anyway, yeah. Stranger Things. It's my favourite TV show of this year. I don't know what Netflix is doing, but whatever it is, it's working really really well.

And YAAAASSS Galavant! All the things you've said is exactly why I love it so much. Just... everything about season 2 is fantastic.

Spoiler

I also love how you have Madalena and Gareth, two of the most one-dimensional characters on the show (in a show where everyone is kind of one-dimensional on purpose and it works so so well), end up together? And it works? Really well? Gahh, I just want to see Gareth and Sid go rescue Madalena from herself!

 

I need to watch some Archer to regain the Doctor Kreiger vibes; my attempts to continue the fic are stalling in the absence of it.

 

FanficIndex Chyntuck Thanks so much for the NSWFF Index!! It looks awesome! It's so great to have an index. I really, really appreciate all your effort.

 

Tarsier You're very welcome I started working on it exactly one year ago and I'm sorry it took all this time, but you know, 2016 happened. Now I need to start reviewing all the great stories I read while indexing!

 

Chyntuck

Excellent work and thoroughness. After seeing you talk about it in the other forum, I certainly was not expecting to see you over here!