Sense8, Season One, Episode Nine: Death Doesn't Let You Say Goodbye

Riley walks along beach and enters a cave where she meets Yrsa.  It seems that Yrsa is from an older generation of Sense8s.  Riley finds herself transported to Yrs'a place and invited to sit for coffee.  Yrsa is the one who encouraged Riley to leave Iceland because she isn't safe there. Yrsa admits that she used to work to BPO and tried to save the Sense8s that she could.  It was Yrsa who saw Riley's blood reports when her mother took her to be tested for illness.  It lead to Riley to believe that she caused her own mother's death.  It seems Yrsa never had children because she was worried they would be Sense8s like her.

It flashes we move to a scene with Riley in a remote area holding an infant.  Riley demands to know why Yrsa didn't help her and Yrsa says that she felt Riley's pain and called the rescue authorities. A chopper arrives and Riley reveals that all she wanted was to be dead and to be with her former hsuband. Yrsa empathizes saying that when she lost one of their cluster, she thought the pain would destroy her. Yrsa is certain that if Riley didn't want another chance, she wouldn't have tried to find her. Yrsa starts to bid her goodbyes and says that if Riley is found, she will lead people straight to Yrsa.  Riley promises to be careful but Yrsa is certain that one simple slip will be enough.  Yrsa encourages Riley to listen to her cluster with her heart.

Will walks into a lab and sees a version of himself as a child.  Young Will looks at a body on a gurney and the body suddenly turns into Angelica. Angelica warns him that Whispers knows that he is there and that he must run and not look at Whispers.  Will awakes in alarm and finds Jonas waiting for him.

Will sees that Jonas is strapped to a table hooked up to various medical devices. Jonas says that he is being watched and measured and that if he wants to say something he doesn't want the people listening to hear, he has to come to Will.  Will wants to get Jonas out but Jonas has no idea where he is and believes that as long as he is useful, he will be allowed to live.  Will reveals that he has learned all about BPO.  Riley appears and Will reveals that he is talking to Jonas.  Riley says that she is with Yrsa who is like them.  Both Riley and Yrsa note the attachment between Will and Riley. Yrsa calls love inside a cluster  pathological whereas; Jonas says that love in a cluster is love in its purest form. Riley and Will learn that they are born on the same day and Jonas says that clusters take their first breath as one.  Yrsa calls love inside a cluster narcissism.   Riley bids her goodbyes and when she mentions Jonas, Yrsa drags her away. Jonas warns Will that he cannot let Riley stay in Iceland and that a lot of research on Sense8s is done there.  Yrsa reveals that Angelica birthed Riley and he warns that Jonas and Angelica were collaborates who gave birth to clusters and then hunted them. Yrsa warns that if Will is in contact with Jonas that Whispers will soon find her. Yrsa leaves warning Riley that she is on her own.

Lito is very much mourning the loss of Hernando and so sits at a bar getting drunk.  He still doesn't understand how his two worlds crashed into each other.  The bartender tries to empathize with him saying that he knows what it is like to live two lives.  The bartender then admits to having a secret self and he propositions Lito. Lito quickly pulls his hand away, finishes his drink and leaves saying that he is not a f@ggot.

Wolfie sits at Felix's bedside and he is visited by Steiner. Steiner makes it clear that he wants revenge for Wolfie's father's death. Steiner says that this can go no further and then warns him not to make him choose between him and Felix.

Kala is talking to the police and they want to know if she and Maendera were talking about religion.  The police inform her that Maendera was trying to pass bills to make certain religious acts illegal.  It's clear that the police suspect Kala and so Rajan sends them away saying that if they want to ask more questions then they will do so with her lawyer.  Rajan however believes Kala to be innocent and says that with the threats against him, Manendra had no business going to the temple.

We see Lito again and this time he is at the Diego Rivera museum - the site of his first date with Hernando. They speak about the nature of love and art. It's Nomi however who feels his sadness and that makes sense given that they are both without their partners at the moment.  Nomi joins Lito at the museum and though both admit that this is not a good time for either of them, they share their worries. Both are worried if they are ever going to get their lives back. About the end of his relationship, Lito says that he is a coward despite playing heroes on film.

Lito talks about his first date with Hernando and about the various passions Hernando has.  They sat together for hours before finally stumbling into the bathroom filled with passion.  Lito calls his first kiss with Hernando a religious experience.  He compares giving Hernando head to taking holy communion. Lito however from the beginning was adamant that they had to hide because of his fear of losing his career.  Nomi relates with that fear but says that there's a difference between what we work for and what we live for.  Nomi talks about an experience in a swimming pool locker room where she stood up for herself when she was called a f@ggot. The boys ended up holding her under the hot water, giving her second degree burns. Lito yells out stop it, clearly relieving the event with Nomi. Nomi reveals that the locker room made her the woman that she is because she stopped trying to fit in and learned that she didn't want to be one of the boys.  Nomi believes the real violence that  is unforgivable, is the violence we do to ourselves when we are too afraid to be who we really are.

Lost Girl, Season 4, Episode 14: Follow the Yellow Trick Road

This episode is pretty much split in two

In the real world we have some emotional reactions to the horror of Trick’s death. Bo is comatose. Lauren is reeling and feeling helpless that all her medical skill can’t help. Tamsin is in vast denial and conflict over her pregnancy while Dyson is torn apart with grief and guilt while Vex and Mark are… there, I guess.

This has some decent well acted emotional drama.

And then we have Bo’s dream world – the Yellow (or red) Brick road. With Bo playing porno-Dorothy (seriously, that dress screams porn parody) looking for the “Maestro” stand in for the wizard. Along the way we have Dyson the cowardly werewolf (who does make an excellent crack at the name “Dyson”), Lauren the stoner without a brain and Tamsin the estate agent without a heart

Ok, normally this kind of thing amuses me because a) a bit of silly is nice and b) some of these actors are great fun playing different roles. Kenzi (who is back!) is also really good at playing scary long sleeved monster lady.

It’s just… this is Trick’s commemoration, his funeral, his death and I don’t think silly (and lots of Bo learning moments) is really the way to go to mark this. Such a major character for so long – he deserved more than this.

Anyway the gang manages to bring Bo back with some kind of evil fae moth and everyone is reunited. But not before we get some cryptic dream messages – about the evil horse thing they’ve mentioned in passing for a long time that we thought was a symbol for Hades. They remind us about the magical horseshoe Bo got but which everyone has forgotten for a while and something about how the dark evil monster can come to the light

Despite the obvious conclusion, I don’t think this means Hades is going to be redeemed.

Afterwards we have what the whole episode should have been – a beautiful, touching memorial reading Trick’s will and Trick leaving magical, meaningful items to everyone else. This quiet, emotional ceremony is very much what this episode needed.

This episode also tries to pull up some of Vex’s storylines – the idea that he was the two-faced man who didn’t know what he wanted, try to stagger both courts (like Bo?) and has now finally found some acceptance though he has a huge amount of guilt and sadness over what he’s done in the past… which would be nice except we’ve never really seen any of that developed. He’s been used repeatedly as a comic relief character with occasional bits of storylines but no real following that up (the latest being Vex’s sudden-on-then-not desire for Mark). This belated attempt for humanisation was basically because Hades appeared to slit his throat to “send a message” (I’m disappointed that the show’s only recurring male bisexual character died before that can be developed, especially since there’s been one-off depictions that have been less than ideal.)

What, dead Trick wasn’t enough?

Liar's Game (The One Rises #5) by Anna Wolfe

The Seer’s manipulations have become more and more blatant – not least of which is the virtual leash she’s placed on Silas, binding the powerful Demonborn and the leader of the Free Bitten.

Under the leash and with the desperate secrets he has to keep, his team is increasingly fracturing and out of his hands while he himself is more and more consumed with the fierce temptation for Callie which distracts him constantly

But despite the fracturing, the Seer has managed to keep her ties to everyone – to some mysterious end.

Ok, let’s address one of the nifty and annoying parts of the book. Yes it’s both at once.

See the entire plot involves people doing stuff because the Seer has manipulated things to make it. On the good side this means we get some final movement on some major plot points. We get a lot of meta development, a lot more insight into what the Seer actually is (which is pretty awesome) as well as a major sense of epicness about to happen. This story has always had big things happening in the background but, to a degree, we’ve had a much closer focus on Mark, Edie and Callie’s story. Stuff has happened in the background, but this is really about them, their personal development, their excellent family dramas, their coming to terms with their difficult pasts, their powers, their hungers and generally what it means to be Bitten. Certainly Silas and others have been far more involved in something greater and larger, but the main cast has been somewhat drowning in events set by other people

While we’re still very much focused on Callie and Silas (and, to a lesser degree, Mark and Edie) and their personal story –but now we are bringing in more and more wider elements. We can see how the Seer has manipulated Silas and so many others in the past. We can see how much all of this, the whole story, comes from the Seer pulling strings and always has. We can gain a sense of just what is at stake and the epic consequences and requirements of the Seer’s manipulations. We even get an insight into the Seer themselves, endless, but changing ruthless but driven and almost desperate while always in control

All of this is good

Supernatural, Season 11, Episode 13: Love Hurts

It’s time for a holiday themed episode – Valentines Day. One of Dean’s favourite holidays because there are a lot of single women out there thoroughly sick of the holiday making them feel bad who think a nice night with Dean Winchester will take the sting out of things (I can definitely see there point – though one woman apparently dismissed Dean for having a “dad bod”. Clearly more shirtlessness is needed to see if this is true).

The magic du jour involves people ripping out hearts (which Dean dubs an “ironic werewolf”. Which would have been so much much much more awesome). Specifically, a babysitter is killed by a monster that looks like her employer (who she is having an affair with) who in turn is killed by a monster that looks like said dead babysitter

After a brief check in for shapeshifters, the wife quickly crumbles when her apparently dead husband comes looking for her and spills to beans – she went to her handy local witch for a love spell to try and keep her cheating husband.

Said witch has a very depressing definition of “love”

A little investigating and they find that this heart-rippy curse is actually contagious – and caught by kissing which is why the widow is now being hunted. Dean, never one to hesitate at martyrdom (and being torn by guilt which is kind of his ground state of being) kisses said widow so that the monster can hunt him instead

Sam is not amused and realises there’s a little more than the usually background level of guilt going on here.

Some research follows revealing the witch has caught a being that appears as your “deepest darkest desires” (I can understand why one’s spouse may be you deepest desire – but darkest?) before ripping out hearts. While there’s much snarking about which woman that will be for Dean, no-one is surprised when it turns out to be Amarra. Though Dean’s a little shaken. While Dean do-si-do’s with the monster, Sam goes witch hunting

Friday Discussion: Prejudice Free Worlds

© 2007 Scott Maxwell, Flickr | CC-BY-SA

Bigotry, prejudice and privilege saturate our society. Sometimes it’s big and flashy, screamed hatred and slurs, violence, blatant discrimination and exclusion. Sometimes it’s more subtle and insidious - endless micro-aggressions and assumptions that so often stigmatise, ‘other’, exclude and demean marginalised people every day. And all too often it’s inherently structural, our law, our culture, our entire society has been built on a foundation of prejudiced assumption that make merely navigating in daily life a trial.

It’s no surprise then, given this constant barrage, that when it comes to fiction some authors strive to create worlds where these prejudices do not exist. After all, if you’ve got a world where vampires, werewolves, witches et al actually exist, then why shouldn’t it also be a world where prejudice doesn’t?

This is a point we’ve made repeatedly before - a fictional world doesn’t HAVE to be a certain way. No author is forced to perpetuate the same bigoted tropes from the real world into a fictional setting. Regardless of what innumerable Game of Thrones fans think, it is not more realistic to have a setting with dragons or an economy where sex worker and soldier are the only professions than it is to have POC in Westeros or women who are not raped.

So your world doesn’t have to contain prejudice (but nor is containing prejudice inherently wrong) and this sounds like a wonderful way to avoid all kinds of pain for reader and author alike which is a definite plus. But all too often the implementation is lacking particularly since too many don’t stop to think about what an entirely prejudice free world looks like

Take the far future where mankind has either evolved past racism or have devolved to a level where racism is the least of their worries. What would a future without racial prejudice look like? Where every race is truly equal in opportunity (even if that opportunity is to be scabbling a subsistence living in the irradiated ruins of the future)?

Well, while it’s hard to track world population by race (because it’s a somewhat nebulous concept - though it is tracked by ethnicity), on a global scale it’s clear that White people are most certainly not the majority (Han Chinese people alone make up for 18% of the global population and the next two largest ethnicities are also non-white) and when we look at demographic changes, White people are going to become even less prevalent in the future, not more (as many frothing racist screaming in despair and horror).

Wings of Hope (The Veil Series #0.5) by Pippa DaCosta

Muse was a slave to her full demon master, cursed and derided like all half-blood demons, she seem to have no way to freedom and nowhere to go.

Until she meets Mammon, the Prince of Greed who shows her a new way when he demands three nights with her.

This book is well written, dramatic, very well paced and with some very powerful emotional, impactful contact. The story showed us some of the demon world, the elementals, their powers and their council.

It was very dramatic and very stark which graphically depicted Muse’s horrendous past without pulling any punches or trying to romanticise any of it.

My only issue with this book is that I’m not sure what the point of it is? I mean, we know Muses’s history from Beyond the Veil, we know she was a half-demon who was enslaved. We know she was abused and tortured. We know she was raped and tormented and we know that she was passed from one demon to the other.

We were already told all this. And while I’m generally a fan of show-don’t-tell, I’m not entirely sure what is gained from telling and then showing. Especially when the showing depicts graphic abuse and torture and rape.

I don’t think there’s anything this story brings that hasn’t always been told. In some ways that fits with what I want from short stories – I don’t want them to be compulsory. But I also want there to be some point – and that goes doubly for any book that is this graphic. If there is going to be a depiction of such terrible abuse then I really would like to see a powerful depiction of why this is being shown and I didn’t see it here.

Of course, the abuse storyline does, ultimately, end with glorious strength and violence and vengeance. But, again, we already knew that – so why show it again? We know about the scars, so why show the wounds?

Teen Wolf, Season 5, Episode 15: Lie Ability

So, last week, Theo decided it was a greater idea to lure in Parrish the Hellhound and his fireproof shorts. This plan has a terrible flaw – his little pack of chimeras has absolutely no way of stopping Parrish. Pretty much no-one has no way of stopping a Hellhound. The crew gets badly batted around though one does manage to briefly incapacitate him: leaving Valack free to run off with Lydia

Everyone’s plan is kind of falling apart now and we get a lot of desperate teaming up. Malia and Kira team up with  and Corey to help each other: Kira needs Josh to drain out all her excess voltage while Cory needs Malia to stop his pain so he can heal from his terrible Hellhound burns (is anyone even slightly surprised that Corey is, again, the most ineffective and pointless Chimera? This show hates gay people being actual useful integral parts of the plot).

Stiles and Theo, able to get past the Mountain Ash, work together to chase after Valack through the tunnels under Eichenn House, snarking along the way about what a terrible person Theo is while tracking Lydia’s screams.

Scott and Liam want to follow but there’s that pesky Ash everywhere – so Scott decides to seek an expert: Meredith (in a catatonic state). Always ready to be a useful, sacrificing tool (she so deserves better), she has Scott stab her neck with the memory claws so he can see Lydia about to pop and scream everyone to death and that the key to that is Parrish (why this need any advice

While doing this Liam fights off several orderlies including one big guy who is supposed to be scary because he’s big never mind Liam being a werewolf. Well, we have to give the werepuppy something to do.

Parrish can’t just yell “flame on” and charge into action – but a little homespun flamethrower and he’s good to go. Among the many many things that don’t stop a Hellhound we can also add Mountain Ash.

Valack has Lydia because he wants her to use her super scream to discern the name of the Beast so they can catch him while he’s still a teenager – and not transformed into his full and deadly power. He wants to do this by making her wear a Dread Doctor’s mask which tends to kill people – which is a bad idea. He misjudges Lydia’s screams though and ends up with his head rather gruesomely squished by banshee decibels – bye bye Valack.

iZombie, Season 3, Episode 12: Physician, Heal Thy Selfie

This week all the storylines of iZombie pretty much collide together – and it’s surprisingly well done and probably pretty needed

The crime this week is an awkward one for Liv – because it involves 3 decapitated bodies; which means no brain eating or convenient visions. Oops. Awkward to explain this to Liv why her visions have dried up.

The innocuous but creepy Stacey Boss has finally decided to act on Peyton’s (and her boss, Barracus) attempts to bring down his criminal enterprise – so he sent 3 of his men to go kill Barracus. A plan that would have worked if it weren’t for Barracus being a zombie – and zombies being damn hard to kill. Stacey is genuinely upset by the loss of his men – one of them his relative. Liv quickly figures out what happened – partly because Barracus’s kitchen contains an awful lot of hot sauce. And his friend contains severed heads. I mean, if you’re attacked by three guys, it’s a shame to waste those brains, right?

There’s a lot of fallout from this little war between Stacey Boss and a zombie attorney general.

Firstly, Peyton was all set to resign her job. She was, after all, sleeping with her confidential informant who then turned out to be a multiple murdering zombie (Blaine). She is in a deep depression and expresses this by drinking Ravi under the table every night (despite Liv repeatedly telling him that drinking with Peyton is a bad bad bad bad idea). It’s really cute, I’ve always liked them together. Peyton’s boss going missing, though, means the Mayor isn’t willing to accept the resignation – after all, Stacey Boss sends goons after one man who disappears and then the other person prosecuting him decides to quit? It looks like cowardice, it looks like the city has caved – it would be an open admission of defeat. Peyton has to keep going… and she declines to move in with Ravi (even with the promise of Major as a doorman. Did I mention they’re sweet together?)

This also comes with an awesome moment of Liv and Peyton confronting Blaine and giving him his marching orders

That’s not even the worst thing that happened to Blaine this episode – since Stacey Boss notices him. Blaine used to work for Boss before becoming a zombie and starting to sell drugs himself. Except some of those drugs were Stacey Boss’s stash – and he would quite like that money paid back. With interest. Blaine is not a happy ex-zombie.