Wild Hunger (Heirs to Chicagoland) by Chloe Neill

Elise is the first vampire born, the first vampire who has never been a human - and the first vampire with a dark secret presence in her mind

She has left home to live in Paris for several years to try and get some space to find herself. But with the talks to try and establish a lasting peace in Europe, she finds herself back in Chicago

And facing the beast inside her - and a plot to end the peace talks and put the whole city at risk

I… can’t say I’m a huge fan of Elisa? I mean I don’t feel any especially personality with her. And I’m trying hard not to compare her to Merit - but it’s inevitable that since this series is literally the heir to the previous Chicagoland series; the protagonists are going to be compared. And Merit with her love of books and junk food and baseball, her snark and close relationships, her determination to face down Ethan and her father - Merit had personality, Merit was a character and she was surrounded by other characters.

Elise… isn’t? I mean she likes coffee… that’s kind of like the only thing I know about her. Her personality,wishes, desires, hopes, everything is subsumed into both her struggle with the Beast and her I-hate-him-but-we’re-definite-love-interests-Connor.

What’s most frustrating is how much meat there’s there! She’s the first born vampire. She grew up never seeing the sun and literally not knowing what she was and surrounded by supernaturals. She moved away to France and spent years there trying to find herself. How can this not inform her character? How can someone so unique with such different life experiences BE SO BLAND?! Why doesn’t her years in France inform any of her character except her hanging around with French vampires who are shuffled out of the way before we have to focus on them too much. Why isn’t her being the

And there’s the “beast” which is again, blandified. If your character is literally hosting a powerful magical entity that feasts on rage and turns her eyes red I expect it to be… more? I mean now and then she struggles to control it - as in we have a paragraph of her saying no to the Beast, and we move on. And when she loses control? She beats up someone who kind of deserves it? She fights hard in a situation where she’s already fighting? The unwillingness to make Elise do anything truly bad or awful with the Beast (she beat up a man who stole from and was going to sexually assault her best friend? Merit would do that twice, no need for the Beast) makes it all feel limp and, yes, bland

To add to the blandness we have the characters around her. Merit worked because she was surrounded by fun an awesome characters as well -he conflicts and romance with Ethan was interesting. She had Mallory her best friend which waxed and waned, there was Catcher and Jeff and her grandfather and the fraught relationship with her parents and even her frustrating relationship with Morgan. There were PEOPLE in her life and they were all informed enough and interesting enough to add to the story, to her story.

Legacies: Season 1, Episode 10: There's a World Where Your Dreams Came True

I think this episode someone on the writing team suddenly realised that Josie and Lizzie exist and ooooh shit, get them out the plot box, this looks super bad for Alaric to forget he has daughters!

And then everyone else on the writer’s team responded with “but but but can we make ti all about Hope?”

The answer to that is, of course they can make it all about Hope. It’s the Legacies after all.

So, Lizzie and Josie have returned from a nebulously labelled “Europe” (my latest petty hobby is when Americans say this I ask “how was Liechtenstein?”) and Lizzie is super pissed because Alaric was supposed to pick them up at the airport but he forgot.

I’m a little miffed that Josie is being super reasonable because it’s kind of making Lizzie look unreasonable and irrational (this whole episode is basically “Lizzie is unstable and dangerous” while ignoring she may have any kind of reason to be upset)... but really? If someone said they’d give me a lift but when I arrive at an airport after a jetlagged transatlantic flight, wait a prolonged period of time for my lift to actually show up then have to find my own way taking three hours to get home? Yeah, I would make Lizzie look calm and reasonable.

So we begin with Lizzie being miffed, which is when the monster of the week appears, going for the urn. The monster is a genie and grants wishes. And Lizzie, who, we have to remember, grew up in a MAGIC SCHOOL decides that this is a super cool idea. How can all these people be so genre blind? Honestly put me in a supernatural world and I would run into a demonic vampire’s open arms rather than spend 2 seconds speaking to a wish giving being.

Now Lizzie could have just wished that her dad pay her the slightest bit of attention or made her a priority in her life or, maybe, decide that she matters as much as Hope. Instead she wishes that Hope never came to the magic school

Yeah that won’t back fire

Uh-huh, it does

So without Hope, Alaric does focus on Lizzie and Lizzie and Josie can both fight now because without Hope consuming all his attention, Alaric pays more attention to them and gives them the training he lavishes on her. Yay for Lizzie

Except the school is a wreck, utterly run down and without the massive luxuries Lizzie has become used to. It seems when Hope went to the school Klaus, before his ridiculous demise, wrote a massive massive massive cheque which is pretty much how it runs (also we had mention of Damon and Elena having children which I think means Julie Plec is planning another spin off and YE GODS SAVE US! SAVE US PLEASE!). I think we can also guess the other Originals chip in because hey, immortal super rich people obsessed with family and all that

Also Hope is the witch who designed the school’s X-Men style cerebro which basically allows them to find budding young supernaturals all over America to recruit them to the school. Without that they’re reduced to literally trawling through newspaper articles for supernatural occurrences and their student body is like 3 people.

Lizzie tries to make up for this by replicating Hope’s spell leading them to a powerful young supernatural who needs their guidance. Hope - and a room full of people she’s slaughtered for food. Alaric recognises her and goes into full on “I’ll protect and guide you” mode playing surrogate dad within like 3 seconds of meeting her (including hugging, the creeper). Lizzie is Not Amused

Legacies: Season 1, Episode 5: Malivore

So, Alaric is off doing some monster wrangling, leaving the school in the hands of his students

Again.

This man has no idea how to headmaster or how schools are supposed to work

Anyway he’s worried that the students don’t think they have enough power in their lives so he’s going to set up a Student Council with 1 witch, 1 vampire, 1 werewolf and Emma (or Emily? Honestly this character is so irrelevant I’m not looking it up) to represent the little kids.

And this Council will have the power to free Kaleb (who is locked up for feeding on humans) and deciding whether to kick Landon out.

Uh… Student Councils shouldn’t have this kind of power. This is not how they work.

So it’s electioneering. Lizzie goes all out for the witch candidate - not actually campaigning, she expects Josie to do it. Lizzie just accepts it as her due that she will win because she’s just that special.

MG is campaigning for himself because he wants to free Kaleb and stop feeling guilty about him being locked up.

Rafael, meanwhile, is running around trying to convince people who are going to be council members to vote to keep Landon around. This involves Lizzie blackmailing him to go on a date with her which is more than a little creepy, MG agreeing - and Rafael trying to convince the werewolf alpha (who will obviously win the werewolf vote) but Jed is an arsehole and refuses to even listen because he treats the pack as his servants, including making them do his home work. So, obviously, Rafael beats him in single combat and becomes the new alpha.

Hope is continuing to test Landon for any kind of supernatural woo-woo and getting nowhere. He has no apparent supernatural abilities and the truth spell she uses reveals he knows nothing about his ancestry (has only a picture of his mother), has no abilities, no idea why he’s glamour proof and no idea why he wants the knife. They also bond over their mutual suspicion of others and inability to trust because of painful childhoods.

Interestingly Hope does a legacy spell on him to check his lineage for magic and finds none. Which Emma considers weird because everyone has a little.

This lack of supernatural powers is a problem because Jed blames him for losing his alphadom and he beats Landon up. Hope becomes super concerned about him and whether he feels safe at this school. Landon says yes. The lie detector spell says no

And my gods why hasn’t the eternally paranoid Klaus got one of these? WHY?! Like 80% of the Originals plot lines could have been solved by one of these.

So the Council election: Rafael becomes the werewolf leader no surprise there. But Kaleb wins the vampire leader which may point to the vampires really not being happy with Alaric. MG is super sad since he only wanted to make up with Kaleb. And the witch vote goes to… Josie

Turns out that Evil Ex Penny has been campaigning for Josie above Lizzie. Lizzie is devastated and super upset and Josie tries to comfort her and even offers to give up the role for Lizzie - and Lizzie doesn’t refuse but apparently Lizzie wasn’t even the runner up. Penny, when she rubs salt in that wound is right, the witches don’t think Lizzie will represent them. And she’s not wrong - Lizzie is very self focused. But the main reason why Penny hates Lizzie is because of how she treats Josie - Josie exists to serve and support Lizzie. We’ve already seen Josie backing off Rafael because Lizzie is interested and, as Penny points out, Lizzie didn’t even pause to see whether Josie would like to be council head before running for it.

Maybe Penny won’t be so demonised.

Van Helsing, Season 3, Episode 7: Hunted Down

This episode of Van Helsing we follow all those people we probably don’t care about all that much and feel somewhat irrelevant.

I think we have a weird dichotomy of stories - we have the main epic storyline of Vanessa and Scarlett taking down the elders. It’s epic and focused and the centre of the storyline.

Then we have Denver which is… ok? And we have Scab and Ivory and it’s like… why? Why do we care about these people, these side characters in other people’s stories? Or Sam and Mohammed - why, where do these people fit?

To have a whole episode on these side plots without any real foundation to them is just distracting - on the plus side the writers seem to be finally bringing these plot lines together into something coherent and maybe, finally, making them relevant

Scab has decided to join the Sisterhood. He’s gone on a weird journey, since two episodes ago he didn’t see why he and Ivory needed the Sisters then was demanding they obey and serve him but now he decides he wants to be a memory and begs to join - even when that joining requires him being castrated. He’s now a loyal member of the Sisterhood and loyally following Ivory

Meanwhile Axel is leading the survivors from San Francisco to Denver and losing his shit in an epic temper tantrum when they’re attacked by day walking vampires and one of their members is bitten. He has a right to be annoyed since they blatantly ignored what he told them for their own safety but he still has an epic shitfit that probably won’t help anyone

Further up the road they find a van that has broken down full of people heading to San Francisco (and carrying weird blue rocks), including pregnant woman Kit. Axel wants to help despite Dre’s misgivings because Axel is now a nice guy and not super suspicious of anyone

The leader insists that there’s a ship in San Francisco taking them to Hawaii where no-one is infected with vampirism. Axel, having just come from vampire infested San Francisco thinks this is a super super bad idea and tries to talk them out of it and instead says they should go to Denver where there’s a safe community developing

Leader guy isn’t having it. At which point Axel becomes super high handed trying to overrule him which makes sense for the character because he’s always kind of being “I know best” since season 1, only Vanessa’s Honey badgerness managed to push it back - and he’s clearly feeling super protective of Kit. Leaderguy super over-reacts and actually points a gunt at Axel

This ends up with him dead and their group joining Axel’s group travelling to Denver

The Last Ship, Season 5, Episode 7: Somos La Sanger

Doctor Who, Season 11, Episode 6: Demons of the Punjab

A Discovery of Witches: Season 1, Episode 8

The final episode of A Discovery of Witches and I am immensely frustrated. Oh, British TV shows, every part of my soul wants to say how inherently superior you are to American shows - but no we have to have these teeny tiny seasons where absolutely nothing gets space or time to be developed!

It’s something American shows TEND to do better (I say “tend” because they also tend to have marathon seasons of So. Much. Filler).

So we reach this last episode with Juliette the disposable and pointless threatening Diana and dramatically declaring she was created by Gerbert expressly to seduce Matthew and Matthew just rejected her and so she’s just been his whipping girl and servant and now is totally jealous of Diana.

And oh dear gods this character. We will revisit this in the conclusion when I have had a drink and can handle the level of cringe here. The cringe is high

Juliette decides to stab Matthew after making him kiss Diana because, well, she’s not a character, she’s a caricature of woman scorned. Matthew ends up bleeding and dying and Diana pulls another magical power out of her back of Deus Ex tricks and shoots Juliette with a bow made of fire. Bye Juliette.

Oh and that “fire was the only element she doesn’t have” of course she has it?

She worries about poor Matthew who is now dying and she prays and begs saying she’ll do anything to get him back. Thankfully the goddess is all into that, warns her there’ll be a price but Diana’s all ANYTHING FOR HIM and feeds him her blood and lets him bite her.

Y’know if blood was what he needed they had 2 other witches, 2 vampires and I’m sure a passing bunny or something to help spread the load. Someone could even sponge up Juliette.

She also throws up a magic circle to stop anyone else interfering so he can drain her to death

Which of course he doesn't do because that whole “craving” thing just means nothing and was kind of thrown in the first couple of episodes for some Twilight-esque shout outs but then never actually went anywhere. Diana does realise he does crave her and has been resisting tearing out her spleen and sucking on it every minute they’re together

She thinks this is sweet and romantic

There’s something badly wrong with this woman. She needs help. She needs an intervention.

The Last Ship: Season 5, Episode 4: The Tropic of Cancer

The Marginalised Swansong


Gay Maris/Lesbian Shark

Doctor Who: Season 11, Episode 3: Rosa

A Discovery of Witches, Season 1, Episode 1

This show is set in Oxford. Since Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, one of the most beautiful cities in England it’s kind of required to have lots and lots of aerial shots and showing off all the pretty university buildings. Only this is accompanied by overly ominous music and melodramatic voice overs

The first few minutes of the show and already the urge to snark is rising… It just feels like it’s going to… take itself overly seriously

Our main character is Professor Diana Bishop, she’s an American researcher who has a position at Yale who is back in Oxford in the hope she will be offered a professorship. By the way everyone gushes, she is very very very good at her job as a historian.

She is also a witch -but never uses her magic because her parents were killed by witch hunters in the Ukraine (as she explains on an almost date with a guy who is also a librarian and she kinda needs to work on her flirty banter) so she’s decided it’s far better to never practice magic and have it leak out accidentally ruffling papers and throwing priceless ancient books around. She also wants nothing to do with the local witches despite being friends with Gillian, local witch, and the local coven leader offering her a place

She is, perhaps, not the best at making decisions.

She has to do some research on Alchemy to get her paper done by October  so she can get this much coveted role so she goes researching in the Bodleian where she requests a book. This book is a Special Book and it only appears when she asks for it. When she touches it we get a full on poltergeist experience with flickering lights and writing moving and running down her hands and it even burning her. Duly freaked out she sends the book back - and it vanishes.

She calls her aunt, who raised her, for advice but then hangs up all sulky because her aunt suggested maybe she use magic. Diana is outraged - how could she suggest a magical witch use magic to deal with the magic weirdness caused by the magic book?! The very idea!!!!

The magical weirdness is also felt by all the vampires in Oxford, especially Matthew (a professor of biochemistry) who sidelines in ominous voice overs. He think she has found The Magical Special Book which contains secrets about “creatures” (supernatural beings), especially vampires. And he’d really really like to find that so that a) the witches don’t find it and use it to squish vampires (since vampires and witches are not best buds at all) but mainly b) so he can fix vampires. It seems recent attempts to create new vampires have been failing -as we see with young vampire Marcus trying to raise his friend who gets in a terrible car accident. This doesn’t work and the man dies.

Also Marcus’s non-consensual public attempt to turn someone is totally not allowed as well. Matthew and his assistant Miriam are testing blood and trying to find a cure. He thinks the book will help so approaches Diana and honestly explains his worries and predicament.

Hah, no. He starts following her around being all spooky and vampiric and creepy making not-quite threatening statements and warning her that other supernaturals will have felt the woo-woo and be looking for her. He’s also trying to grasp that despite being rather powerful, she’s also utterly ignorant of her power

The Originals, Season 5, Episode 9: We Have Not Long to Love

For a few brief moments, everyone seems to be happy. Klaus, Hope and Freya are having a super polite breakfast. Isn’t it nice, all the family together and Rebekkah will be back soon and isn’t it nice?

And then Elijah arrives and it all starts falling apart. Hope is super pissed with him still and leaves after magically bending a fork. Klaus has a tantrum with Freya for helping Hope and filling her full of black magic which Freya still holds is the best decision and everyone is just not happy

But Klaus and Freya do have a nice moment where at least Klaus acknowledges that Freya does love and care for Hope - and Freya gives Hope a nifty bracelet of suppressing evil dark magic. While this is a touching, I note that Klaus finds love and understanding for his family when they happen to bring out something useful to him. Ultimately, the core issue of the Original Family is that Klaus treats his siblings as supporting cast

Hope does try to pretend she’s totally ok with all these evil magic bubbling inside her and she’s just destroying cutlery because she has evil voices inside of her. This fiction doesn’t last long as she’s quickly driven to panic and destruction by the evil voices battering in her head - and Freya’s anti-dark magic bracelet catches fire so not an ideal solution here

Well done Hope, you have continued a glorious Mikkaelson tradition of making things worse while trying to make them better

We also have utterly pointless character Declan back in time - and why is he even here? I honestly have no idea why he is here.

He sees Freya and isn’t thrilled that they had a funeral for Hayley without him and wants to know how she died - and she tells him it was a car accident

Which he… doesn’t believe? I don’t get this - it’s such a bizarre denial. He doesn’t believe in car accidents? He’d rather believe everyone he knows is running some kind of bizarre conspiracy over her death. This is a weird form of denial and, perhaps because this show has made no real effort to establish why I should care about Declan or his relationship with Hayley, it just feels bizarre

To make this worse, an angst laden Elijah decides to visit him so he can get even more angsty with the other man who loved Hayley because why not? We can always use more angst it seems. And then Declan realises Elijah is the ex who broke Hayley’s heart so MORE ANGST

Time to make things even worse with Hope turning up and having a dark magic angst moment and being all “you killed my mother!” before belatedly remembering to magically put Declan to sleep so he doesn’t get involved in all the supernatural shenanigans.

The Originals, Season 5, Episode 7: God's Gonna Trouble the Water

Everyone is still grieving over Freya and things are generally all sad and terrible. Caroline has sent a letter saying “yeah that’s all sad - I’m off to my school that admits Nazi vampires. Toodles” and she’s out.

Hope is grieving deeply with Freya trying to provide comfort and being deeply aware that Hope having a melt down may actually melt the whole city. The plot remembers Josh exists and he’s feeling guilty for some reason. And Vincent is worried because of the whole scary scary shadowy darkness that happens when several Mikkaelsons are together and everyone’s kind of down - and hoping Klaus leaves because Klaus and Hope in the same place is such a bad bad idea.

There’s also the funeral about to happening only none of Hope’s family can attend without bringing about terrible dark apocalypse. Klaus intends to attend astrally

But dark and horrible things are already happening - because Elijah is in town. He and Antoinette have decided to see Nazi Greta’s Nazi folllowers so they can pay their respect to this dead Nazi. Disturbingly they find a whole army of Nazi vampires passionately dedicated to Greta’s Nazi ways and Antoinette is a little freaked out because she’s not really that on board with the whole Nazi-ness. Despite this they don’t look at this packed room full of Nazis and think “hey Elijah is an Original, let’s kill all the Nazis”

Antoinette also belatedly realises that maybe, just maybe Nazi Greta was probably a bad guy and it’s all her fault that Hayley’s dead

Y’know despite her not really caring last episode and being quite willing to have Elijah used as a Nazi tool for her Nazi mother. This shaky characterisation comes from the writers wanting us to be sympathetic towards Antoinette despite the whole Nazi thing.

Following that shaky characterisation we also have Elijah still defending the whole thing. This is necessary because we need to dangle the idea that Elijah may join the Nazi vampires despite it making absolutely zero sense. But the plot demands it

The plot demands it because Klaus is very very very very very very pissed and has imprisoned both Elijah and Antoinette - and has bitten Antoinette. That means she’s now dying from werewolf venom unless Klaus heals her. Which Klaus is not willing to do even when Elijah offered to get his memories back: as far as Klaus is concerned Elijah is dead to him because of Hayley’s death. Antoinette is also not thrilled with Elijah getting his memories back because a thousand or so years of his co-dependence with his family are likely to overwhelm their 7 year relationship

This is a recurring thing this episode, everyone wants Elijah to have his memories back despite everything knowing there is a reason they were taken from him

Siren, Season 1, Episode 8: Being Human

This episode is both very moving and emotional… and kind of frustrating.

Nearly the entire focus of this episode is on Sean’s funeral. That would be Xander’s dad, a man whose name I didn’t even know before this. Which is kind of the problem - because we’ve got all of these characters gathering round and grieving and being all emotional and reinforcing their own connections and it’s all kind of weird as a watcher because I didn’t know Sean, I wasn’t even slightly invested in him. In fact, I barely know most of these people and their pain is pretty meaningless to me. I feel like a stranger who just gatecrashed someone else’s wake and I should find some polite way to excuse myself and leave via the back door

And it isn’t just that I didn’t know Sean, there is an issue that most of these side characters are not well developed or important. The plot has focused super closely on Ben, Maddie and Ryn. I’ve seen Ted in passing but the tension between him and Sean’s wife Patty, his history of once being a fisherman himself with Sean, his relationship with Elaine his wife (which seems to have vastly changed since the first episode when they were portrayed as barely tolerating each other). I mean, am I supposed to care about Ted and Elaine? Are they important? Do they matter? Or there’s Cal, who has sex at a funeral and beyond the fact he doesn’t like Ben, do I know anything about this character or care?

We just have a whole lot of emotional moments between characters who haven’t really been established enough for us to really care about. Like Chris saying how utterly traumatised he is by all the mermaid stuff so he’s going to move to Iowa (Or Idaho. I forget which and don’t care enough about this character to check)... which would, I’m sure, matter if I thought of Chris as more than a glorified extra.

Or we have the moment when Patty turns on Ted as working them all to death and the cause of Sean’s “accident” with his pressure which means Ted realises he’s no longer seen as “one of the guys” but Ben stands up and speaks for him because the strained father/son relationship is still there. Or Xan drunkenly talking about “them” taking his dad. Or Helen ominously discussing family history with Ted. I mean all of these moments and toasts and talk about the community are really powerful and would be great in, say, season 3 after we’d spent some time investing in these characters - but there’s no emotional connection here.

Shadowhunters, Season 3, Episode 9: Familia Ante Omnia

I am officially Team Demon. These people are far too stupid to live

Let’s start with ground zero of humanity’s extinction by their own damn fool decisions - Clary. Proof that humanity has not evolved nearly as much as we think

When we left our less than intrepid definitely not-heroine she had just been imprisoned by the Clave because she decided to stay and wave at them rather than run away. She then went on trial and despite having the shiny woo-woo of being able to escape the sword of truth and occasional genocide, she decided to tell the Clave everything anyway. Namely that she used humanity’s one and only desperate wish that was being reserved to save everyone from possible destruction to resurrect her very annoying boyfriend which then left him vulnerable to possession and he’s now running around aiding the Queen of Edom and probably bringing about said end of the world.

Hey, everyone cool with that?

The Clave is not cool with this.

She is sentenced to death and led out along with a lot of other people, cicle members, the warlock Iris who wouldn’t do magic the Inquisitor demanded of her and possibly other people. Actually I think they’re nearly all circle members. Seriously the Clave has an issue that they have this many Circle members lurking around.

The Clave executes people by burning them to death which is brutal, horrifying, barbaric and repellent (but then, any death penalty is) and utterly savage and any other time I’d condemn this ferociously. Except this is Clary...

I don't like marshmallows.

To save herself, Clary offers to use her ability to pull runes out of her arse to do the woo-woo that Iris refuses to: resurrect Valentine

 

I refuse to believe this is an ancient organisation. No organisation this stupid could last that long

Ok, here is the Clave’s logic. Since Lillith has sent Jace to grab a chunk of Valentine’s corpse, they’ve decided to burn his body and scatter it to the four winds so there’s no chance of her ever doing that

Hah, no, that would be sensible. No they’re going to resurrect Valentine and ask him if he knows why people want to desecrate his corpse. So yeah, this is the plan they go with. Clary’s rune works and Valentine explains that he doesn’t have a damn clue, but he did use Lillith’s blood to inject into Jonathan while he was in the womb because he’s evil that’s why. Clary and Valentine make the massive logical leap that she’s trying to resurrect Jonathan

And then Valentine escapes, rallies his circle members and starts slaughtering everyone. Lots and lots and lots of slaughter. Because Clary’s rune also makes him indestructible.

Well fucking done, Clary. She eventually remembers she can turn it off again after pretty much everyone is dead. Valentine is now dead -and evil Jace shows up with suspiciously plot-convenient timing to rip out a dead fascist’s rib and take Clary captive. Yay, she’s captured again