Secret Circle, Season 1, Episode 21: Prom.

The Circle is gathered in angst and melodrama discussing that Cassie and Diana saw Nick last episode and that he’s looking surprisingly good for a dead man. There’s debate as to whether it’s Nick, whether it’s a demon, whether he’s merrily mauling people. With high emotions from Melissa (who loved Nick) and Jake (Nick’s brother). We also have some flaring of the trust issues between John Blackwell and Diana with Cassie trying to sooth it all over and declaring her trust for John because… actually I don’t have a reason.

Later Faye chides Jake on not being sensitive over Melissa’s feelings over Nick which is almost funny coming from Faye. Did everyone skip the part where Nick is Jake’s brother and there’s probably a big reason why Jake is upset over the whole issue? She tries to get him to “talk it out” but he’s not especially open to that. Faye, again, has the best line “you’ve got that look… that look that you’re about to invade a small country with nothing but your tortured soul.” Such a perfect line, I have to steal it. And Jake decides to arm himself just in case

Cassie’s super special blood is going to help her find the crystal hidden in the school – so off she toddles (alone, of course) and she gets to hallucinate the past – including seeing her mother with the crystal. She hopes to see more so she recruits Diana to help her see more (despite her outrage over Black Magic). They plan to do it the next night on prom so the school will be open (and full of people. In fact, I’d say this makes prom the worst possible night to choose) though Diana is upset that she will miss Prom – the most special day of the school year

We top up the angst with Diana and Charles (her father, Evil Parent#2) and then some more prom drama with Adam, Faye (who has invited Jake), Cassie and Melissa with Faye pushing to have a “normal” prom and celebrating it properly – I actually kind of love her ultimatum “There Will Be Dancing”. Faye continues to push for more promness. Diana also meets up with Grant (pointless Australian Guy) just to keep the angst levels nice and high.

Finally plot wise we get Melissa meeting Nick at the Magic House. Nick needs the crystal and says he’s dying but he doesn’t seem to be in his right mind and storms off when Adam turns up. Yeah, Adam kind of makes me feel the same way. Melissa insists that Nick is in there to be saved by Ada (Wet Lettuce) and Jake (Sexy Evil One) think he was just after the crystal and he’s wild, feral and dangerous.

At prom they cast the spell (choosing the worst night of the year also allows them all to have magical hijinks in formal dress) and they flash back to the school in past and see the Amelia and Elizabeth (Diana’s dead mother) arguing over John and how evil he is and how it’s Amelia’s fault for trusting him (oh and to ratchet up Diana’s angst levels even more)

Amelia returns the crystal to the Adam’s (Wet Lettuce’s) grandfather who is a teacher at the school – and tells him that Ethan (Wet Lettuce’s dad) is turning John over to the Witch Hunters to have him killed – Granddad Lettuce isn’t best pleased at the idea of trusting the Witch Hunters but it turns out that Blackwell has been casting fertility spells ensuring that all of the women in the Circle got pregnant at the same time – ensuring their children would (also explaining why they all had kids while still in high school) grow up together. (Did the Elders do the same thing with the Parent Circle? Because they all seem to be of an age as well). He’s creating his own Circle with the kids. Granddad Lettuce agrees to hide the Crystal while Amelia flees.

Discovering that John Blackwell has been manipulating the parents and the kids, Diana has a huge hissy fit and blames it all on Cassie before flouncing out of the room, letting Cassie up her angst levels.

In the present, Melissa adds some more angst, lamenting to Adam about how they never have a normal life because of magic – Wet Lettuce uses some magic and dancing to cheer her up. Faye and Jake discuss how Jake stood her up at prom years ago and drags him out to the dance floor. This gives her the chance again to try and make Jake talk about his brother

Anyway the crystal is found but Nick finds it first so they all (except Diana who is having an angst meltdown) chase him (humour moment – all of the girls run while putting on their coats while chasing him outside, no really, because in a chase scene you worry about getting cold) and, yes, everyone is running not using magic. And they’re all running in formal clothing and formal shoes. They, naturally chase him into a deserted, spooky junk yard (but Faye wonderfully mocks it of course)

Nick is meeting Eben (Evil Black Witchunter) and wants to trade the crystal for his demon – which Cassie says is what’s keeping him alive, so he wants it back. Melissa, Chief Angster for Nick declares that having a demon inside you is no kind of life (this is foreshadowing for why it’s ok to re-kill Nick/let him die again). Now with 3 of them (Adam, Cassie and Melissa) they could use the magic of their Circle together to get the Crystal back – but of course Cassie can’t do that and stomps out on her own all dark magicy to make Nick drop the Crystal. Eben sends Cassie flying (with magic… somehow? Was that ever explained?). The rest of the Circle tends to flutter around not doing much – and Blackwell shows up for a show down with Eben. Faye stays to help Eben (alone – so how her bound powers can help I don’t know)

Teen Wolf Cast Talk About What's Coming Up in Season 2

The Vampire Diaries Season Three, Episode 21: Before Sunset

We're almost there everyone, one more episode and The Vampire Diaries will be over for the season. I cannot say that I am going to miss it during the hiatus.  Last week, I threatened to stop watching if Bonnie was killed to turn Alaric into a vampire and since they chose to let her live, I have to keep watching.

Caroline and Tyler have a talk where he informs her that he is off to help Klaus pack and move.  Caroline sees this as Klaus' petty way of getting to Tyler because she rejected him. They head their separate ways, and Caroline ends up at the gym where Rebekah Cheerleader Vampire is cleaning up after the dance. She is upset that she has to clean because she planned the dance and missed it.  Once again I am reminded that the writers of this show simply have no idea how to write a mature vampire. Why would this thousand year old vampire be sad because she missed a high school dance?  Rebekah Cheerleader Vampire informs Caroline that Matt got called into work, and this means that they have to work together without Matt to act as a neutral middle.  Instead of tearing each other apart, they both give condolences for their various losses.

The love fest does not last long. Alaric shows up at the school and attacks Caroline and Rebekah Cheerleader Vampire. They struggle but only Rebekah Cheerleader Vampire manages to get away. Rebekah Vampire returns to the Michaelson manner where she informs Klaus that Alaric is on the loose and at the school.  Klaus promises to run as soon as he picks up Elena.  Rebekah Vampire Cheerleader is upset and begs up to reconsider. She says that they have always had each others back and will again, but Klaus is determined to ensure that he can make more hybrids.  Rebekah Vampire Cheerleader tells Klaus that she is leaving with or without him and when he does not reply she takes off.  I have to say that this is the first sensible thing that Rebekah Vampire Cheerleader has done since she was written into the show.

Elena and Jeremy are painting Alaric's old room when Stephan shows up.  Jeremy is not please to see him and asks if Stefan and Elena are back together.  Elena stumbles but manages to spit out that they are just friends.  Jeremy turns on Stephan and asks him to leave because after what they have lost, they want one vampire free day, before walking out of the room. The doorbell rings and Stephan answers it to find Bonnie and Damon at the door. They tell Stephan about Alaric in between bickering. Out of curiosity was I the only one wondering why having a near death experience meant that Bonnie had to have her hair clipped? Is this the version of the scarlet letter given to Black women when they feed a vampire?

Review of Charmed Season Four

 

This season began with the death of Prue.  I cannot say that I was sorry to see her go. That should have brought to an end to the power of three, but  that would have meant the end of the show, and so the writers rewrote their cannon and introduced  Paige Matthews.  It seems that Paige is the result of an affair that Patty Halliwel had with her white lighter. They knew that they could not keep the child and so they gave her to a nun, who in turn arranged for Paige to be adopted by a family. Prue's death triggered Paige's latent powers. At first Paige was resistant to the idea of being a witch, but after facing temptation by the source she joined with her sisters to recreate the power of three. 

Paige's adjustment period is not smooth.  She has issues with Phoebe and Piper not respecting her personal space and has a few hiccups learning to negotiate her powers.  She has to learn the hard way about personal gain spells when one backfires as leaves her with what appear to be triple F breasts. As a half white lighter, Paige can orb and move things with her mind.  

When the Charmed ones were made up of Prue, Piper and Phoebe, it was clear that Prue and Piper were the mature sisters and Phoebe who was the baby sister was often infantalized. No matter the challenges and experiences, relative to the other two, Phoebe in many way remained an overgrown child. With the death of Prue, Phoebe was finally allowed to grow up but it seems that the writers could not do without their infantalized female. Piper spent much of the season four sucking on lollipops and displaying the maturity level of a 12 year old. This proves that just because a show focuses on female characters, does not mean that it does not promote sexist tropes.

Review: Dream Chaser by Sherrilyn Kenyon, Book 3 of the Dream Hunter Series

We met Xypher in Devil May Cry. And he got a prize for helping them stop the Dimme – a month free from Tartarus. A month he can spend getting revenge on Satara, the woman who betrayed him and caused him to be condemned to eternal torture in Tartarus in the first place.

Of course, getting to Satara isn’t easy and while hunting he runs across Simone – a pathologist seeking answers to an apparent serial killing. Simone is dragged into Xypher’s world when Satara’s agents bind them both together – rather than try to kill the immortal Xypher, the only have to kill the only-too-mortal Simone to kill them both. Oh and the binding stops them getting more than 20 feet from each other.

Forced to live in close proximity, Simone (and Jesse, her 80s ghostly companion) have to deal with his extreme surliness and complete lack of trust – after centuries of being tortured and betrayed he’s unwilling to get close to anyone, even though Simone starts to melt him

Then there’s the problem of the Dimme that is apparently loose in the city and Xypher’s demon brother who has been sent out to kill Simone, Xypher or both. And that’s before people start making deals with Jaden - a being so powerful demons make Faustian bargains with him

Ok I have to say that there were some major issues in this book (especially the romance) that were pet hates of mine – because of this (and the same applies to any review, but doubly so here) if they don’t annoy you so much you may actually enjoy the book. But me, they annoy – and annoy a great deal.

Firstly – and this is a trope the Dark Hunter series uses excessively – Xypher has a horrible tortured past (like everyone in this series. It’s almost reached comical levels). And because he has had such an awful tortured past he lashes out at everyone around him – including Simone – he can’t trust other people again, ever, because one person betrayed him and now he hates everyone and everything – rawr! Not only is it tired and overdone and we’ve already seen the exact same story played out in
Devil May Cry, Dance with the Devil, Upon the Midnight Clear and even Night Pleasures,              (far more if we just include men who have had long tortured pasts) but it also serves as a justification for him constantly lashing out at Simone.

And Simone? Pities him. The angrier he is, the more he lashes out at her, scares her and has temper tantrums at her, the more she pities him. Every surly outburst or sullen pout is just more proof of how tortured and sad he is and why she pities him even more! It reached a point where, if he had stabbed her, I think she’d have spent her dying breath to wail “oh see how much he suffers!”

I hate these tropes combined. I hate the whole Loving Contempt trope, I hate the idea that you should tolerate abusive behaviour because it may hide a delicate, sensitive soul. I hate the idea that it’s laudable to endure the surliness and I hate the idea that lashing out is ok if you have a painful past – while it makes it understandable, there’s no reason why Simone should bear the brunt of it. And I really really hate the idea that a surly, angry man can be won over if you’re patient enough and kind enough and loving enough. Enduring abuse shouldn’t be a praiseworthy activity nor should it be the path to happily ever after true love – it’s horrendously skeevy.

More tropes I hated in the romance – yes the fast forward button was pressed again. Xypher and Simone spent less than 2 weeks together – in fact I think it was more like 3 or 4 days. And yet they BOTH were willing to sacrifice their lives for the other and Simone was desolate without him. really? They’re not even acquaintances yet, but they’ve already reached “I can’t live without you!” stage? Even most depraved stalkers need a little more time than that to get hung up on someone.

To finish off, in standard terms this immortal couple gets to be immortal (rather than just relying on their heritage to get the job done) by effectively enslaving Simone to Xypher. Awwww, sooo romantic *uckies uckies uckies*

Magically Diverse, Humanly Erased

One thing we love in most Urban Fantasy is a rich world. I have to say that they’re my favourite kind - maybe I’m jaded, maybe I’m greedy, but vampires alone just don’t do it for me any more. I love A world that has a vast range of creatures in it - it has vampires, it has fae, it has magic, it has werecreatures, it has demons and angels and all variety of things that go bump in the night. We have different realms, we have creatures drawn from every corner of the world’s mythology - and it makes for truly excellent worlds and stories. These diverse worlds are great to read, great to watch and among some of our favourite Urban Fantasy products.

Unfortunately, it does make something glaring - we have these worlds with this vast diversity of monsters, but the humans within these stories are anything but diverse. We have these homogeneous worlds lacking in more than a token appearance of POC or GBLT people or other marginalised people. We can have this vast portrayal of every kind of creature imaginable - but only ever one or two kind of people

We see several extremely rich worlds that have, at best, only the slightest of minor tokens. Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files has an amazingly diverse world. We have three vast and very different courts of vampires, we have several variations on werewolves. We have the warring Summer and Winter courts of the fae and the vast diversity within each. We have wizards, we have demons (several kinds again) we have an incredibly rich world here. And we have, at best, token, brief appearances of POC and no GBLT characters at all. This Chicago is magically diverse yet incredibly homogeneous.

Speaking of Chicago - Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires also have a growing diversity of creatures - vampires, wizards, river nymphs, sirens, wereanimals - it’s all there, each more fascinating then the last. The people, however? As straight and white as they possibly can be.

I absolutely loved the succubus series by Richelle Mead.  I loved that it had a large world that included many supernatural creatures but it did not escape my notice that Mead could not be arsed to even attempt inclusion.  All the characters were White, straight, cis gendered and able bodied.  So much imagination had to go into writing lines for a succubus who was friends with demons, vampires and an imp.  At times it felt like the large supernatural cast was meant to cover for the lack of diversity in the series itself.  

Last year we coined the term the Marginalised Maris. One of the ways in which authors attempt to allude to diversity is by talking about a marginalized character without ever really introducing the character to the audience.  A perfect example of this is the Anna Strong Series by Jeanne C. Stein.  Stein went to great care to create an extremely diverse word which includes, several forms of shape shifters, vampires, witches etc., but manages to do in an all straight, white, cis world. In, The Becoming, we are told about Michael, Anna’s gay best friend.  The only thing we learn about him is that he has been gay bashed. He never becomes a part of the story, he exists solely as a cheap reference for some quick GLBT inclusion.  Stein was far more interested in creating a diverse cast o supernatural creatures than having a diverse cast of marginalized human beings. 

Review of Disintegration Book 5 of the Autumn Series by David Moody

 

When I first started reading Moody's Autumn series, I was completely drawn in.  Moody's work is stark but it grabs you right away.  With each word, the reader is forced to place themselves in the place of the survivors of the zombie apocalypse.  Moody has once again re-entered his post apocalyptic world to give us yet another story of survivors.  What started out as innovative and new has simply become repetitive and boring. 

As in other books, even when dealing with different survivors, Moody attempts to connect them to each other.  In this case, the connection was a helicopter which we are meant to assume was the one used to ferry the survivors to Cormansey to avoid the continuing threat the zombies posed.  Trapped a hotel, trying to be as quiet as possible these survivors are desperate to get the attention of the helicopter because with each passing day it becomes clear that the distraction that has been for the zombies is no longer holding their attention.

The new element in Disintegration is a disease that is now killing off survivors who survived the initial release of the virus.  They believe that it comes from contact with the diseases that a mass amount of dead bodies would create.  They are forced to decide whether to quarantine and ignore this latest round of victims or attempt to help them at the risk of getting sick.  The question then becomes, is it okay to leave someone who is sick alone to die at the hands of zombies to save your own life?

Blood Ties: Season 1, Episode 5: Deadly Departed

  We begin with an argument – Vicki being rather good at those (and usually in the right as well) between Vicki and Celluci. After weeks of refusing to hear anything to do with the supernatural he is furious that Vicki didn’t tell him that Henry Fitzroy was a vampire! He also tries to argue two pronged that Henry is a threat (because of all the stuff he has seen in the movies) and pour scorn on the idea that Henry helps her deal with the supernatural cases (which he pours scorn on for believing in). I’d demand he pick a point and argue it rather than arguing 2 mutually exclusive points. Still, Vicki has ordered far far too much Chinese food, so this can be discussed over a meal

We move to what looks like a haunting and a death because of it – a really really scary haunting actually. That was really well done considering what looks like an extremely small special effect budget. The deceased is a defence attorney and his widow wants Vicki to investigate (the police believe it was a heart attack). She believes the attacker would be Magnus O’Connor, an ex-client of Freddie’s. Except it seems like Magnus killed himself a week ago.

This of course leads Vicki to go see Henry because… I have no idea. To pose for a picture for him (except the picture he’s drawing isn’t actually in the pose she’s sat in… details details). More flirting and foreshadowing. The next day it’s time to go interview Magnus’s grieving mother – she gets no information but makes the woman cry and Magnus’s younger brother threaten her.

On to the most excellent pathologist, Dr. Rajani Mohadevan (she is my favourite character in the show – even if it is dubious that Vicki has constant access to her morgue) who points out that cardiac arrest just means “heart stopped working” and doesn’t indicate much in terms of cause of death. Bruises on the heart suggest someone reached into his chest and squeezed it. She also finds out that Magnus died with a pentagon carved into his chest – something that Celluci lied to her about.

Back to Henry for more feeding him of information which leads to the inspiration of Magnus’s suicide being a Celtic death ritual to allow him to seek revenge after death. On to see Sinead, an ex of Henry’s (they broke up because Sinead used magic to bind him to her – something she tries to do again, using magic to coerce Henry back into her bed) who says  that the spell on Magnus’s bodies was just the equivalent of the Last Rites.

Later we get to see the excellent pathologist again when the prosecutor in Magnus’s case also shows up dead with Magnus’s fingerprints on his heart – causing Vicki to go check on the judge as well. He’s covering in fear after a threatening phone call (really judge? In your profession a spooky phone call sends you to the panic room) and Vicki questions him on exactly why Magnus is so eager to kill them all – it seems they covered up some of the evidence in his case being contaminated. She packs the judge off with Henry to a hotel to keep him safe but, alas Magnus arrives and kills the judge anyway (despite Vicki’s truly pathetic attempts at first aid). But they did find out that Vicki’s marks from the demon allow her to touch Magnus’s ghost.

There follows some fun confrontations with the police (especially the Nasty Police Chief who just Hates Vicki, Crowley) over the judge’s death. Time for Henry and Vicki to question Sinead for the truth of the ritual while Celluci and Dave Graham (his side-kick – can a bit character have a side-kick) question Magnus’s brother who has been seen at each of the crime scenes. Sinead tells them some random vague stuff about Vicki’s tattoos and that the ritual on Magnus’s body wasn’t cleansing ritual (surprise) but actually *gasp* blocks the spirit and keeps it on Earth (you need an expert to figure this out by now?) and that it has been bound to a person! If only they could figure out who? I mean he has “mother” written across his chest in big letters.