Requiem: Z Nation

As the last season of Z Nation reached the finale it was revealed that there won’t be another –I saw the news on Nana’s twitter account. Honestly, part of me is shocked that such a gimmicky show lasted for five seasons – but I’m still going to look back on this surprising sharknado of a series…

The Good

It’s original, it’s new, it’s different. To bring such zaniness, so consistently to a long running zombie show was definitely surprising. It managed to maintain a level of comedy and weirdness that we rarely see. And yeah, sometimes it was annoying, sometimes it was silly, sometimes it really

doesn’t make sense. But still it’s different and I really appreciate that, Addie, Warren and Murphy (the relationship between Warren and Murphy has so especially when backed with a really strong core cast. Especially Warren who I both think made this show and is completely wasted on this show. But 10k, many levels, I really wish the show had continued just to see more of it)

  

The Bad

I think Z Nation has always suffered from something of a tonal dissonance. It is zany and that does make it unique. And equally if it was zany every episode it would become way way way way more annoying and I couldn’t stand it… but this contrasts a lot from other zany shows like, say, The Librarians or even Warehouse 13. Because Z Nation will not only bring the plot occasionally as well, but it will go all out for epic, heart rending angst and deep emotion and deep complex relationships like the one between Warren and binge watch this show as you’d be going along and then Warren will TEAR OUT Murphy and… it’s confusing. I  can’t even imagine what it would be like to

YOUR HEART with utter grief.

And then the next episode we’ll have a giant ball of zombies taking out the liberty bell neither half realises the other half exists. No matter how serious Warehouse 13 or The Librarians got, they always remembered what show they were. It’s like two shows mashed together and

And I’m not saying the serious elements are bad because they’re really really not. Z Nation can bring the acting and pluck the heart strings… but it feels out of place.

The Diversity

Z Nation attracted our attention in the first season when we saw Obvious Designated Protagonist Straight White Male die. It may be the most stunned I’ve ever been watching a show - they killed the protagonist! Already!

And then Warren stepped up and made the show her’s and I didn’t have a second of regret. Warren was such an awesome character for so long, yes strong but still having scenes of grief and vulnerability, inspiring, positive while not being naive, caring and charismatic. Warren has always been excellent.

Of course Warren being excellent meant occasionally it was tempting to look past some of the more problematic portrayals in the series. The sexualised, servile treatment of Cassandra was appalling, their forrays among the Native Americans have been pretty cringeworthy and their jaunt to Mexico was fraught with stereotypes… but then it also has Vasquez and Escorpion, two definite complex, layered characters.

Sun Mei as an Asian stereotype pretty much ticks every trope box but she was a character despite that and the only word of criticism I could ever have for Kaia (and Nana) is there’s not enough of them. The show has always had a number of female characters alongside Warren and Addie, Red, Sun Mei, Kaia, George and that is always good to see in so many male dominated shows… but I do have to note that none of them are constants in her life like Murphy, Doc and 10k are.

LGBTQ wise we have virtually nothing for five seasons. Two recurring bit characters are revealed as possibly gay for pure homophobic comedy reasons and then never seen again. And Addie is bisexual - and if you just blinked and say “wait, she was?!” you may have missed it as this was referred two once in one episode and then never touched on again. Unlike both her male love interests. We’ve mentioned this trope so often - of course it’s not a problem that a bisexual character is in opposite sex relationships but it’s telling how often the only LGBTQ representation on a show will be That One Episode where a bisexual character briefly mentions their bisexuality for it never ever ever to raise again.

POC as Origin Story

An ubiquitous element of the superhero genre is the origin story. How did this extraordinary individual get these amazing powers? Is he an alien from a dead planet powered up by our sun? Was he bitten by a radioactive spider? Was she forged from clay and empowered by the Greek gods? Did he have a ridiculous budget and some deeply unhealthy coping mechanism after the death of his parents?

In Urban Fantasy we see a trend of another origin story to explain the special magic a protagonist has. Being a POC - or having a POC ancestor at very least.

To be clear here, we’re not talking about having a magical POC protagonist. This is Urban Fantasy, your characters will have magic or other woo-woo, it’s kind of what this genre is about and we’re definitely in favour of several of those characters being POC.  Awoke, The Shadowmancer, The Keys Trilogy, Rayne Whitmore Series, World of the Lupi and many others are not problematic because they have POC who happens to have magical abilities - far from it. They have magic and are POC but at no point did the books try to suggest that their woo-woo exists BECAUSE they are Black or Asian.

Equally we’d expect many of these POC, their lives and their magic to be affected by their ethnicity and culture. We love and celebrate books like The Black Dog’s Drums, which excellently incorporates Yoruba derived religions into the setting, the world building and the characterisation. The same applies to the Habitat Series and the Egyptian elements of the Shadowchasers Series. The Jane Yellowrock Series links a lot of Jane’s woo-woo to her being Native American - but being Native American also informs her characterisation and her history. It’s not just a convenient label to justify her accessing exotic woo-woo. The Changeling Sisters has a lot of the magic related to Korean, Latinx and Hawai’ian culture - but that’s because it has Korean, Latinx and Hawai’ian characters whose ethnicity is an integral part of who they are, the world building and the story. Ultimately they work because there is considerable research and respect for the source material - something we can see with depictions of western mythologies like Irish and Norse in, for example, the Iron Druid Series.

We want more of this, so much more; with both white and western dominated media there are so many stories this genre could be telling by integrating POC and the mythologies and magic of other cultures and I’m still mourning that some of these series have come to an end.

But that isn’t achieved by having books treat Voodoun beliefs, Rroma heritage, or Native American ancestry as the same as a Freak Lab Accident, super-soldier serum or a Green Lantern Ring.

A glaring example of this, as well as why it’s so problematic, comes from Midnight Texas. This has the special prize of having Manfred have his psychic powers in the books because of a Native American ancestry. And in the TV series because of his Romani ancestry. It says a lot about how a minority culture has been represented that you can easily exchange one for another and not really change the story, magic or anything else.

Ancestry is a common trick in these origin stories - after all, if Superman can get his powers from being an alien, why can’t Jeremy in the Otherworld series get his hands on some quasi Japanese Ofuda from his absent Japanese mother? Hemlock Grove threw in some basic Romani stereotypes to go with their using being Romani as why characters were psychic and… werewolves somehow. Twilight is also notorious for creating an entirely fake Native American mythology to justify the presence of a pack of werewolves. The appalling on several levels Houseof Night series also went with that Native American woo-woo - deciding to have the protagonist, Zoey, be Cherokee - but only so they could introduce lots of woo-woo and turquoise and smudge sticks and a whole fake mythology while the Mercy Thompson Series is pretty notorious for treating all the Native Americans in the book as walking avatars of woo-woo. Literally all of them.

In all of these cases the actual ethnicity, culture or characterisation that should stem from having a POC character is absent. The writers weren’t interested in creating fleshed out, well researched and developed POC characters or in respectfully portraying and representing non-western cultures in a way that showed research and regard. They want the woo-woo. They want the different, the exotic, the alien.

In many ways it’s similar to how many book and TV series will introduce a monster from a non-western culture for a more “exotic” episode-of-the-week that we’ve spoken about tbefore… why have a werewolf when you can have a wendigo? And it shares the same flaws -  deciding one of your main characters is POC or has POC ancestry purely so you have some backstory for their woo-woo isn’t representation or respectful. It’s appropriative and it’s belittling - it clearly sends the message that the writers are pretty indifferent about these actual cultures and just wants something suitably dehumanised and “exotic”, something that is sufficiently “other” to most of their readers to justify why they would have such different powers. For DC that meant an alien from Krypton. For Urban Fantasy a Romani or Cherokee are considered alien enough.

The Friday Discussion: Midnight Texas - TV series & Book Series

There are a lot of book to TV show adaptations - they’re popular in the same way reboots are: they give you a built in fanbase to carry over and a quick and easy plot. Naturally these vary a lot in terms of quality and faithfulness to the source material (Vampire Diaries barely resembles LJ Smith’s books, while the Dresden Files was moderately faith but poorly executed), sometimes those adaptations and changes deserve some more scrutiny

When Midnight Texas was announced as being adapted I was intrigued: I consider it to be one of Charlaine Harris’s better book series with better rounded characters and certainly better (if flawed) treatment of minorities and slightly less of a single, slightly Mary Sueish, focus. (If this sounds like damned with faint praise… it kind of is. We experienced the horror that was the Aurora Teagarden series).

When the show started I was happy to see it was pretty faithful to the book series - the first season parallels the original trilogy of books (so I have no idea where the story progresses from here) but there are some noteworthy changes that really need analysing

Firstly several characters have have their race changed for the adaptation Lemuel and Fiji were both white in the books. This is not uncommon in book to TV adaptations - look at Tara on True Blood and Bonnie in The Vampire Diaries both of whom were white in their original book series. There are several possible reasons for this but, cynically, I tend to think that in the visual medium of television it becomes much more glaringly obvious when your cast is whiter than a Republican camping trip in Maine. That, coupled with the wider consumption (and a desire to be consumed by POC as a marketable demographic which seems to be less of a concern in publishing), means I think we tend to be MARGINALLY less tolerant of a completely racially erased cast - though usually one or two tokens is enough to placate this minimal objection. In the third book, Fiji does remark on how rainbow and progressive her little town is… and it’s slightly embarrassing since it includes Madonna and Teacher who are vanishingly minor characters, an Asian woman who used to live there but hasn’t for a while and a Native American character who just moved into the area who was, probably wisely, not included in the TV series (she also forgets several latino characters)

In the books this character arrives to explain that Manfred has his powers because of distant Native American ancestry and demons. Which is just an AWFUL trope. In the TV series instead they went for Romany con-man/psychic heritage instead. Which is another awful trope. Honestly this is just pick your poison.

I, naturally, do not object to these characters becoming POC but it is interesting how this has caused the characters to change elsewhere. Like Lemuel - he’s an absolutely excellent character in both the books and on television but the most dramatic change is that in the books he was a cowboy when he was alive. On TV that has changed to him being a slave. Neither storyline is particularly bad, but I can’t help but think that too much of our media is incapable of seeing Black people in historic roles that don’t involve slavery. Especially since the mythos of the cowboy in the US has missed just how many of them were Black - and how many more were Latino for that matter. The TV storyline isn’t bad, but it speaks volumes of how historic Black characters are too often limited to this single narrative.

I have more issues with Fiji - and how she and Manfred’s roles have changed. In the books I would say it’s difficult to point to one character as protagonist - Manfred starts prominently in the first book, but by the final confrontation with Kolkonar Manfred is definitely a much more minor character - not insignificant but certainly not the protagonist or the main fighter against the demon. If anyone is central to this conflict, it’s Fiji. This is Fiji’s fight, not just as someone who needs rescuing. It is Fiji’s… ritual that defeats Kolkonar, not Manfred’s epic confrontation with dark spirits.

The Friday Discussion: The Marginalised Swan Song

There is a myth that a swan sings just once, beautifully, before it dies.

After watching and reading numerous Urban Fantasy shows and books we have found another, more plaintive herald of impending death: The Marginalised Swansong

All too often we see a marginalised character relegated to their standard roles - standing in the background to add diversity points, disappearing into the plot box for several episodes, existing only to serve the main character, devoid of their own plot lines and, quite possibly not even having any lines - and then suddenly they start talking! People notice them! They even pretend to care!!! They have sudden relationships (being LGBTQ and in a relationship is especially dangerous) and maybe even a storyline!!!

And then they die.

It’s reached a level of almost comedy that we can predict this happening so often. Of course it comes down to classic tokenism: they’ve decided to add some marginalised characters but that’s about all the effort they’re willing to spend on them. Look, they’ve given you some dark skin and the token gay, give them the damn cookies already! But when it comes down to killing off their disposable characters (and marginalised characters are so very very disposable) they have a dilemma.

No-one cares about them. And it’s a waste of good drama to kill someone no-one cares about

A classic example for this is T-Dog from The Walking Dead. T-Dog was such an utter background character that sometimes he went entire episodes being nothing but set dressing - fandom was actually more concerned with the fate and eventual death of Merle who not only appeared in three episodes less than T-Dog, but was objectively a terrible person. T-Dog was pretty much non-existent. No-one cared about T-Dog. There was reasonable chance half the audience didn’t even remember he existed. How do you kill off a character like that when the likely reaction of most the viewers will be “who?”

This is not the emotional reaction most writers aim for when they kill off a cast member

So they desperately try to big him up, slap some characterisation on him before he finally falls off his perch and joins the choir invisible. Which is exactly what we saw with T-Dog a couple of episodes before he actually died, he suddenly started talking, he had lines, he even build an almost friendship with Carol. Then he died.

He’s not an isolated incident. The Walking Dead alone did similar things with Noah, Denise and Sasha (and likely more). The Vampire Diaries belatedly remembered Luke existed and was involved in a life and death decision a couple of episodes before he died. The Last Ship finally pulled Aleisha out of the set dressing to suddenly focus on her relationships (after seasons of blink-and-you-miss-it-portrayal and a general disinterest in family life for any character) so we could remember her name before she died. Bitten tried with Jorge. And Penny Dreadful desperately tried to slap some characterisation on Sembene before killing him off. Supernatural took Charlie from being a briefly appearly one off whacky adventure character to finally involving her in the main plot. She was involved! She was important! She was a real character! And she was dead. And it’s no consolation that I predicted it three episodes before BECAUSE of this trope.

Privileged Actors Playing Minorities

It’s a debate that won’t die as again and again we see cishet white, able bodied actors cast in minority roles. (And yes I had to use that meme). And every single time it happens there’s always a legion of supporters jumping out to say why it’s completely ok.

It is not. It really really isn’t. There are a large number of POC, gay, bi, trans, disabled actors out there who can perform these roles. And cishet, white able bodied actors will be ok folks - 90% of the roles out there are already tailor made for them. They don’t have to have the last 10% as well!

But beyond the fact that cishet, white, able bodied actors already grossly dominate the entertainment industry, casting them in these roles has severely damaging implications with a whole lot of terrible history behind them

We cannot separate what privileged people playing marginalised characters means and has meant, no matter what creators current intention is. Both collectively and for individual minorities. Casting white characters in POC roles cannot be separated from a context of deeply racist abominations and minstral shows. Casting cis people as trans characters cannot be separated from the context of people claiming trans people aren’t REAL men/women and that a trans woman is not distinguishable from a cis man or a that a trans man is not distinguishable from a cis woman. Casting an able bodied actor for a disabled role cannot be separated from the context of people believing disabled actors don’t exist and disabled people cannot actually act at all

You cannot separate these contexts from your casting.

And all of these share a common context of mockery - of privileged people putting on these identities and turning them into clowns, caricatures, something for everyone to savagely laugh at and regard in contempt. POC, disabled, LGBTQ people, all have been worn by cishet white able bodied people to portray something worthy of nothing but revulsion and hilarity. We can all think of numerous examples (and don’t tell me you can’t. You’re lying. You really are).

And all of these share another common assumption of, well, every industry but certainly the entertainment industry, that there is a complete lack of minority actors to fill these roles. This is an excuse trotted out constantly and it’s so blatantly not true. You had to cast Scarlett Johansson because you can’t find a talented Asian actor? Really? Out of the billions of Asian people in the world, you couldn’t find one with a modicum of acting talent? REAAAALY? You cast Jack Whitehall as a gay man because he’s the best actor for the job? Really? A stand up comedian is literally the best actor you could find?

How long did you look? WHERE did you look?

You cannot divorce your acting, your portrayal, from this context. You cannot pretend that your casting exists in isolation, that they do not carry these messages and aren’t perpetuating these issues. Every time we get this privileged casting we have these messages repeated and invoked.

Especially since we also have to remember how much minority actors struggle to get roles. The number of roles for POC is vanishingly small. LGBTQ actors repeatedly have spoken about having to be closeted to get roles and how much being out has harmed their careers. Disabled actors are almost invisible entirely and many people argue they don’t even exist.

Contrast that to how a straight, able bodied actor playing gay or disabled role is almost guaranteed to be award bait. Actors will be hailed for their “courage” and acting like they’ve somehow achieved something impressive by acting this role. They’ll get to gush in numerous interviews about how Important it was and how Hard it was or, even more nauseating, how they are doing such a wonderful service for the minority in question by taking this role, appropriating the story of marginalised people and profiting at it

Requiem: The Originals

After five seasons The Originals has finally come to a close; after coming back from he dead over and over again this show has finally died for the new season of Legacies to drag itself from the ashes.

The Originals was one of those shows that actually managed to pull off a spin off - it made it work and managed to create a unique entity that both had all of the connections it needed to the Vampire Diaries while still being its own unique creation. And that kept going for five seasons

Whether or not that was a good thing is… debatable.

The Good

The acting. There has always been some top notch acting on this show. Even with these often terrible storylines, even having to force all of these endless angst and drama scenes over and over and over. They were not given a lot to work with but damn they worked it well.

I also think the underlying world setting of this series is good. The Original Vampires, the different kinds of witches, the werewolves and their curse - at its core it was a fascinating world setting I would love to explore. It actually makes me a little angry that the writers cared so little about continuity that they ruined this one element I liked

The Bad

When The Originals first spun off from the Vampire Diaries the writers had two major problems. Firstly, The Originals were the worst. Oh Rebekkah and Elijah had been shown with some redeeming features - but Klaus and Kol were definitely irredeemably awful. It was hard to think of how these characters could be sympathetic protagonists unless you’re going to outright run with “audiences will tolerate any evil so long as the guy is hot.” While this is true, it’s unusual to outright openly rely on that

The second, and bane of any writer, is that they are ridiculously powerful. For much of Vampire Diaries they were figures of almost legend. The founding vampires, the first, hundreds of years old and more powerful than anything in the world. Which works for a mighty antagonist your cast is afraid of - but as a protagonist?

This scenes encapsulates the problem:

Each Original is quite capable of massacring entire armies - and we KNOW they have no moral qualms about killing since pretty much all of them has slaughtered people on occasion. One alone is pretty unbeatable - get any number of them actually working in tandem and the writers are faced with trying to think of a convoluted reason WHY Klaus/Elijah/Kol/Rebekkah don’t just unleash a massacre. Several seasons of Marcel challenging Klaus? Massacre. Nazi vampires? Massacre. Angry witches? Massacre. The Stricts? Massacre. The return of Lucien and their oldest children? Massacre. Angry werewolf pack? Massacre. Massacre, massacre, massacre.

This led to the writers either continuing and exacerbating The Vampire Diaries habit of changing the various powers and abilities of the creatures based on what is narratively necessary with mighty Original vampires either massacring armies or being brought down with a convenient magical item or not that impressive witch in between

Marginalised People Cannot be Confined to Niches

We’ve spoken repeatedly about the paucity of marginalised people being represented in all forms of media. We’ve seen show after show, book after book and game after game with no marginalised people. Or, at best, limited tokens clinging to the side of some privileged people’s stories. We tag those books that have POC, disabled or LGBTQ protagonists - they are by far the minority of the books we read and generally (albeit not always) far lower profile and not part of greater series. Often, they’re pushed aside or shuffled into their own side or niche genre

This can be seen very much in the trend of long paranormal romance series: The Black DaggerBrotherhood, Dark Hunter Series, Argeneu Series and so many others feature long chains of romances, a new romance with each book, constantly showcasing more straight and primarily white romances. While the excellent Guildhunter Series and Psy Changeling series feature many POC, they, again, show a chain of straight romances. LGBTQ people, when they appear, are confined to bit characters, usually supportive (or terribly terribly represented) and not given close to the same representation as the straight couples. And when you have a series of 15+ straight couples, the comparison becomes glaring

It’s not, of course, that romance with gay characters doesn’t exist - but it is very much a separate, (and heavily colonised and problematic) genre. The idea that these romances should be blended into mainstream romance seems almost… alien. These are niche stories that belong in their niche subset

We see this pressure for pushing marginalised characters into niche genres very much with the assumption Societal Default - that every time a marginalised character is present it must be for an agenda or a reason (and, the implication being, that with that reason it should then be a specialty “niche” show again). Our society is far more comfortable with a show like RuPaul’s Drag Race or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or even the L Word and Queer as Folk than it is with a gay superhero show (you’ll not my conspicuous lack of giving an example here). The former all have concepts where the LGBTQness is “justified” and has a “reason” and, as such, fits its appropriate “niche”.

 We see this as well in the powerful backlash we get when these characters and stories step outside their niche. Star Wars “fandom” has driven marginalised actors off social media for the terrible crime of bringing POC to the franchise. Star Trek discovery faced a similar racist outrage, Black Lightning, and Luke Cage had a wave of outrage and protest and the epic shitfits pitched about Black Panther was the stuff of legend. One of those terrible legends where the world ends and we’re all eaten by giant wolves.

This definitely extends to women with both typical backlash against Wonderwoman and the mere fact that Batman and Superman have both had a mindboggling number of films made about them - but Wonderwoman’s has only just been released despite being a contemporary. And Jodie Whittaker’s new role as the Doctor has not only prompted a backlash but also prompted her excellent comeback: Women Shouldn’t Be a Genre

In all these cases we had marginalised characters and stories stepping outside their niche; their specific defined genres to tell their specific, permissible stories. I actually participated in one especially annoying comment thread where a pouting man was upset that Star Wars was abandoning its concept and reason for existing. He compared including marginalised characters in Star Wars to having men control NOW and NARAL - he sees marginalised characters mere existence as pursuing an agenda that is antithetical to the genre itself.

This mentality, this idea that marginalised characters may only exist - or only be important - in certain niche genres, telling certain permitted stories greatly limits how marginalised people see themselves - and it also greatly limits marginalised writers. It has taken far too long for Octavia Butler to be recognised as a pillar of the sci-fi community and I can’t even imagine how many of her contemporaries deserve to be recognised but are not because sci-fi isn’t their appropriate “niche”. N.K. Jemisin has even written an excellent piece on why she doesn’t want her books shelved in an African American section of the book store.

Let’s be clear, I’m not saying these niches can’t have value. There is value in having marginalised media produced by marginalised people for the consumption of said marginalised people (there is a reason why #Ownvoices is so important). There is value in marginalised people being able to explore, represent and embrace issues which are specific to themselves without having to explain them to people who don’t experience them. Kind of like being able to tell an in-joke without having to explain the context to random passers by. Or not having non-marginalised people leap into family discussions to Give Their Important Opinions.

But niches are great places for marginalised people to visit and use - but they can’t be prisons; they can’t be an excuse to drive marginalised people away from everywhere else

Romance: Persistence is Not a Virtue

There are many times in life where persistence and patience are rewarded. Times when we - and certainly the characters we read - should fight on no matter what, against all obstacles, in the teeth of the most vicious opposition. After all, a hero winning against all the odds is always good for an epic story. And it’s almost a trope now that if your hero gets into a fight this will start out badly for them, they’ll be beaten until they rally, the dramatic music plays and they give their enemies a good kicking. Everyone loves a scrappy underdog story and there’s nothing quite so underdog as rising from the ashes of defeat

Then we come to romance and… this trope continues. Not only continues but it has been thoroughly embedded in our society - faint heart never won fair lady, women play hard to get and, most toxically “no means yes”. We have entire genres of romance, rom-coms and more centred around the plucky male underdog, being rejected and refusing to take that no for an answer, persevering and then winning the reluctant woman’s stubborn heart. All “no” means is that you need to try harder, try again and again and again until you wear her down.

Or, to put it another way, men don’t take no for an answer and continue to stalk, harass and generally annoy a woman until she gives up. These stories don’t show love or romance and these men don’t approach their prospective love interests as people - but as prizes to win, obstacles to overcome to earn their eventual reward.

This can be very prevalent in long running Urban Fantasy series where a relationship is a slow burn rather than an insta love.

It takes Kate Daniels several books before her relationship with Curran became a thing. Oh he fixated on her quite early in the series but she wasn’t buying, despite being impressed by his physique. She resisted him, insulted him generally tried to make it clear that they were never going to be a thing. While he pursued her, pushed her, challenged her and even broke into her house (this seems to be a theme of these relationships - it’s not true love if the guy hasn’t broken into her house at some point).

I love Kate and Curran’s relationship. I love it, they’re awesome together - but they way they got there was a problem. Kate said no, Kate refused but Curran pushed and pushed and persisted and thought and… won.

We see this with the Otherworld series’ original partners - Elena and Clay. Their relationship starts in the rockiest possible way with Clay biting Elena and risking her life turning her into a relationship without her consent. After some rocky beginnings she runs - yes she has other issues as well prompting her to run, but after leaving the country she is very clear that she doesn’t want Clay in her life. Like a good Urban Fantasy protagonist, he takes this as a challenge, pushing back into her life, using circumstances to move into her home (and wedge between her and her actual fiance) and even getting handsy. Elena says no to Clay, Elena does not want him in her life - yet he persists. And he wins.