The perfect joy of Fixing Things

One of my least favorite things is when a show or a movie does something just stupid with a character, especially if it's obvious that it's just for shock value or some really lame attempt at being unexpected that falls flat. There's too much good TV around to get away with being lazy and derivative (in the bad way) these days.

But while I hate that, I absolutely love the ability of fan communities to fix it. Because when the show itself drops the ball so badly that the fans have to step in and rewrite it, this door opens up in the story--or is exposed, or we line up just right to see it, or something--and suddenly there's space in the story for us.

The days of passive TV consumption are done. We're not at a point where we can just write the shows as we want them to be*. But we're at exactly the point where we can take the source material, and through fan art, fanfic, meta posts, articles, and discussions, we can correct the things that piss us off. And there's a community that wants to see and share these things! I mean, how cool is that?

Here's a few of the posts I've found on tumblr that try to make the strange Black Widow-Hulk storyline make more sense. It was sort of a "whatever" for me, which is rare since I'm such a hardcore shipper, but it really upset a lot of people, and their responses to it are so often creative and generative and better that it's impressive:

http://samiholloway.tumblr.com/post/136491327602/capeandcowl-aroskywalker-gingersnapwolves

http://samiholloway.tumblr.com/post/130064544622/people-who-could-have-calmed-down-the-hulk-who

http://samiholloway.tumblr.com/post/127321905357/amuseoffyre-now-this-i-could-have-tolerated

See how these things, these pretty simple tweaks make this thing so much better? Something as fantastically messed up as a whole season of a show (cough - sleepy hollow season two - cough)** takes a lot more work, but that's also a lot more space. A show that is perfect and ideal, no matter how good, no matter how addictive, is hard to find space for yourself in. But a thing that's still good, still loved, but broken in specific places? That's a huge opportunity, and I ADORE that there are people who see that and get mad, and then instead of sitting around complaining, get up and do something about it. Because broken stories are insulting to those of us who have invested in them***, but they're also a place to rework the text, something we don't get to do in any official capacity, but that we have this whole space online to look at, collaboratively, creatively, and replace with something that works and flows and makes more sense without having to destroy or invalidate the whole canon to do it.

And that's amazing.

What do you guys think about fan-fixes? What're your favorites? Share in the comments!

*and I'm not sure I really want that to be the norm, because majority rules rarely makes the best decisions.
**Or last season of Homeland, from what I gather, for instance.
***And there's a difference between a damaged storyline that makes out of character and questionable choices just for the sake of making them, with no set up or context, and stories that make choices that make us uncomfortable on the way to better stories.

The epic Sleepy Hollow Season 2 Rewrite Pt1

I've made no secret that I've been having issues with Sleepy Hollow Season 2. Even though the episodes started off okay, and ended closer to how they should be, the sophomore slump hit this show hard, and there's just a lot that I can't let lie when I have the power to rewrite it, so here's my Better Than That version of the series.

The rules:

• Keep the main plot points to prove that they can still have made this season, just better
• Remove the most problematic, stupid, nonsensical, and pointless stuff and replace it with something that worked with the plot as established, was true to the characters, included all the characters, and kept the momentum up
• Rearrange some of the points that were underserved so that they could become proper plot details and compelling story
• Everything in season one stands as is, because while it wasn't perfect, in comparison, it was a shining example

So! Act I: Things are worse now...

This Is War

This episode was actually pretty great. We got an epic Ichabbie hug. We got a lot of awesome illusions. We got Jenny being a badass. We got good set up for the season.

So we're keeping:

• The whole surprise-party / Archive / the Key / Henry being a bizarrely adorable captive surrounded by houseplants / it being an illusion thing
• Ichabod getting himself out of the box, especially the part where he records a dying message for ABBIE, not for HIS WIFE
• Jenny getting herself out of the Warehouse and Henry reading her sins to get what he needs, and every second of the Ichabod Drives An Ambulance thing
• Katrina in the cabin stabbing Ol Headless and escaping was pretty cool, so we'll keep that
• Most of the Purgatory scenes, because they were great: Andy Brooks helping her to remember he's human, the mirror-contact and the Epic Hug and so many shoulder and hand-grabs afterward, the double and the key and all of that
• Getting the Key with Jenny, and Jenny hugging Ichabod and reminding him how to function in the underworld

What we're losing:

• Shirtless Headless was the start of him not being an actual villain, and getting totally defanged, so we're ditching that mess
• Katrina being IMMEDIATELY recaptured before she even escapes the room
• Henry being gifted a fancy set of armor instead of being changed into War directly
• Everything about Moloch being in focus, moving normally, and wearing clothes--naked, blurry, not-moving-like-a-human-at-all demon-kings are much scarier and less cheesy

What we're adding / changing:

• Katrina gets out of that room, narrowly avoiding Headless, and hides out in the woods, where she tries to call on her powers and finds she's still weak--and that nature doesn't seem to like her much; things aren't just not responding to her, she's getting weird unnatural results; she's recaptured because she's sort of horrified and lets her guard down, not because she's an idiot who can't do anything. She gets the necklace after she's back inside, and it burns her or something so we know for sure it's bad news, not just letting her see his head--which only looks like his Abraham-head when he's making an effort, and looks like that gross old skull when he's angry, maintaining his villainy and scariness.
• Henry is gifted the mantle, not an automaton, and it changes him physically--and Moloch actually gives him orders.

This way, we have a set up where K is not useless, Henry has a much more clear role as a tool without all the gross grovelling, and there's not that disconnect between him being gifted power in this episode and him being punished in the next for the same thing. Mostly, though, that return episode was something close to what we'd expected from the previous season, and it was great.

Kindred

This one was also not bad, but had some of the seeds of stuff that got out of hand later, so we'll do a little surgery, but also mostly leave it alone. The real work comes later in this season!

What we're keeping:

• The Kindred, of course
• The dream at the beginning, where Ichabod foresees the ritual of binding, and especially "you must be alike in every way"
• The whole intro of Reyes was pretty great, how she was immediately on the wrong foot with Abbie, but also caring and considerate of the fact that she knew Mamma Mills, and later, how she thinks she knows that the town is having some sort of cartel problem.
• And all those other cops! Look how Abbie knows them all, and they all have things to do!
• Abbie and Ichabod finding and then scoping out the Willow Point Estate, and their various conversations about how they need to stay focused and Ichabod trying to jump the gun and Abbie stopping him
• The argument in the cabin about whether it's worth the whole raising-a-monster thing, and Ichabod just loudly declaring that they will
• The fight Katrina and Headless have about how Ichabod couldn't let Abbie stay in Purgatory more than a few hours, but let his wife stay for centuries, because that's some truth right there (though in his defense, he couldn't help her because she put him in stasis, so it's really sort of her fault), and "Moloch has a plan for us all"
• Visiting Frank in jail and telling him to plead crazy by telling the truth--and him telling them where he hid the Head
• All the bank scene, every second of it
• Jenny getting caught with illegal weapons and getting sent to jail
• The whole scene in the Tunnels, looking for the body and finding it with the booby traps, Abbie's flashbacks, them talking about what their greatest weaknesses are and whether they're actually weaknesses, all of it. That scene was beautiful.
• The "I wanted it to be you, I just wasn't ready to marry anyone" line, because that was good stuff, even if it was a lie. It buys good time.
• The battle with the Kindred against War and Death is pretty great--so we'll keep all that.
• Katrina saying "this is not my world" and Headless saying "it won't last long"
• I guess we can keep "still no sign of the Kindred"--and then later, have it show up when it's needed, because it's bound to Abbie since she said the words
• Reyes visits Frank before Henry shows up, and looks a little sharply at Henry but doesn't listen to all the crazy from Frank; she does, however, make notes in his file

What we're losing:

• That statement that the body is pre-enchanted so all they have to do is say the words

What we're adding / changing:

• Katrina listens actually carefully instead of really obviously and poorly; Henry knows that I&A are coming, but it's said incidentally to Headless, not as a weird threat to Katrina
• The Kindred ceremony doesn't work when Ichabod says the words, but the second time around, Abbie says them and they do work--setting up that she has magic in her somewhere, and that Ichabod can't do magic because he has conflicted loyalties and you have to have absolute will to make it work
• They don't tie up Katrina, they block her into one room with magic, which she then starts to systematically dismantle, proving that she actually does have power and understand how magic works. More strange things happen, but she has to get out so she's motivated.
• After Katrina says she wanted to marry Abraham, and it turns his head from a gross skull to a lovestruck human-head, she says that Ichabod was a mission, something that got out of hand, but she's seeing more clearly now.
• Katrina wants to leave, but Headless is on his way back and she's still trapped; she chooses to stay because otherwise Ichabod will be caught--he doesn't make it all the way in there just to have her refuse him. It's a matter of snap decisions, not of her being a lame-o. He goes, and Katrina gets her barrier down just as Headless shows up and finds her free; she says she wants to help the battle since she enchanted the Kindred to begin with, but the battle is already over. The necklace changes her a little more. 
• When Abbie goes to see Jenny in jail, we'll keep Reyes and her mistrust of Ichabod, because that's great, but instead of Jenny just rolling over and taking it, we'll have Reyes revoke Abbie's guardianship, and give her a note on her record--and send Jenny back to Tarrytown because obviously she's still crazy and dangerous.
• Frank gets his new lawyer, and it's Henry, and it matters that he was hired by Cynthia--but instead of Frank casually and accidentally signing over his soul, they're interrupted by a very angry Jenny being dragged back to her old cell, which they've been holding for her. Jenny and Frank make eye contact, and he doesn't sign anything; he says he's tired and he needs to look it over better later.

This way, we keep the core of the story, where they raise this monster that is the opposite of Death, and they ridiculously don't put it away again when they're done with it, and then we can use it later. We also keep the concerns Abbie has with Ichabod's loyalties, and we make a point of that time when he just overrides Abbie and Jenny and declares that they're going to do this whole Kindred thing. Meanwhile, we build on the idea that Katrina isn't all that she seems, and we give Jenny and Frank something to do when they're out of the picture, so that they aren't sidelined--they've got plot and purpose, and they're together, not rotting in separate cells while the plot continues to move on without them. Also, it stifles Henry a little, and removes a lot of Frank's passivity from this whole beginning of the season.

What're your thoughts on my construction of these first two episodes? I'll be doing two at a time periodically to get me through the break until I have my Season 3--because they totally got renewed! Whooo!

I'm afraid TWD will get too dark

I love this show. I've been watching it since it started lo these many deaths ago, and I've been taken by surprise by every one of the Group who didn't make it, or turned evil, or had to be killed because plot. 

But I'm afraid it's going to get too dark for me.

See, it's already gotten darker. There's less people around, less food, more walkers, more psychopaths. Which is realistic. But the first season we had the hope of reunions and making it to the CDC. In the second season, despite the cluster that was staying in the farm, we had the hope that they could settle and start over. Since then, it's been the hope of the prison dashed by the Govorner, then the hope of Terminus dashed by crazy cultish cannibals, and now there's two major deaths in a row, not soon after several other deaths, and more psychos and less food and more dirt, and I'm just...

I'm a firm believer that there has to be something to look forward to in a post-apocalyptic story, something to strive for, something to build a new world on, or else we're just watching The Road in drawn-out form. We're just watching the world die. And what the hell is the point of that? That's super-bleak and hurtful; it just becomes an endless string of watching people we like get killed in creative ways, and that'll get old. I, at least, will stop caring about them.

So, this season's dive into yet more sadness and despair? Eugene was lying, but we've got to find some new reason to hope, some new thing to wish for and strive toward, some new reason to keep being human--and now, five years in, I feel like it's a good time to find something real. Not a hope that literally blows up on them. Not a piece of the old world held up by denial or by lunatic dictators or cannibal weirdos. No, we need something that will actually help, that will start swaying others to Rick's side instead of pitting them always against the world, something that gives people a reasons to not eat each other.

I'm not asking for anything unrealistic. I'm not saying it has to be something easy--in fact, it's better if it's hard and violent and dangerous, on this show. I just want them to find something that will actually help, that they can rally behind. And then they can get proactive as the crazies, and save people from the hospital and from places like Woodbury and Terminus. I haven't read the comic past the very beginning, and I know things really just keep getting worse for everyone, but I also think that TV is a different creature than comics, with less recovery-time between episodes, and a wider audience, and people will start leaving if there's nothing to hope for.

Some suggestions:

• Immunity. Someone gets bit and doesn't die or turn. Grass-roots science trying to figure it out. This would be a good thing to give to Judith; she was born into this world; she was never not infected.
• A Cure. This is probably a last-ditch storyline before it closes up shop, preferably in a planned and whole way. But that doesn't mean they can't start looking for one, testing them, figuring out how not to be a mass-mudering fuckhead about it.
• Mutation. The virus was only creating walkers because it was poorly-adapted, and now, two or so years later, it's adapting so that maybe walkers are still conscious. Or are turning into something else. Think of the moral dilemmas. But if it's adapting to not kill the host, they just have to survive.
• An actual community of people that isn't led by a lunatic. Either started by Rick, or heard of by him and they go there, and find that it actually is good--and then they have more to defend than just their own stuff and friends, AND a chance to settle down and rebuild. Maybe it's mobile, a whole town on wheels, and that makes it harder to find and more of a hunt.
• A mission. Something like "find the last CDC scientist" or "build this lab" or "travel to this place" or, hell, "build a rocket and move to the moon". Just something that would make everyone proactive, give them a shared goal other than "don't die". Something that could help the remaining people rebuild.

What would you suggest? How would you give everyone hope? Do you fear it'll get too dark?

Sleepy Hollow is severely jacked up, but it's not yet unsalvageable

Once upon a time, there was an awesome little show that featured women and multiracial men in prominent roles, built on what made Supernatural addictive but in it's own way, and was delightfully bonkers. Like, super-bonkers, but anchored to reality in this world full of lots of different characters with lots of different points of view. Also a lot of factions, that you're not sure where on the good-evil spectrum they lie, and a rich mythos based mostly in biblical stuff with with a fresh sideways slant.

It was a hit immediately, and by the second episode had a strong and vocal fandom, and because of that, there was a second season the writer hadn't expected.

Red flag #1, because it's rarely a good idea to expand a show just because the network says so.

It started cool, with Ichabod and Abbie fighting together to get Abbie out of Purgatory and back to the goal of stopping the apocalypse. But, apparently, there were issues behind the scenes--writers let go, new writers brought on, a newshowrunner. And within two or three episodes, the difference was like night and day.

Hessians, Masons, those two warring witch covens we barely met? Gone, as if they never were. Guidance from Ghost Corbin? Gone without even ever deciding whether he was actually a ghost or if Abbie is cracking under the strain. Frank and Jenny, two strong, interesting, and awesome characters with complex interactions with the rest of the cast and the world, who were only just promoted to full cast members? Shuffled off and hardly in any scenes, with the thinnest slips of story to barely hang on to. Ichabod's weird and useful historical information, that both informs the case, illustrates his life, and shows the way he used to live is often in unsettling contrast with how the modern world works? Traded for this weird place where a) Ichabod knows everything, but at the same time b) Ichabod didn't actually know anything, and c) any actual historical context is removed entirely, so nothing is being recast in a new light anyway.

Hell, even the multifarious and constant threat from the otherworld? Headless was defanged, losing his threat and his spookiness, Moloch was normalized, losing the weirdness that made him so different and strange, and every single other villain we met was directly related to him--meaning every other evil they'd faced had somehow disappeared without comment, leaving only Moloch. And Henry, who had been neat and reluctant and powerful in a tragic way, and is now doing his best to act through the pile of one-dimensional "my daddy who didn't know I existed was a bad daddy" BS they've given him. I mean, he's War, but he's also physically separated from his power by remote control, and that seems symbolic of what has happened to the show.

Worst, though, than everything else, is that they've taken the core out of the show: the way two wildly different people come together to face impossible odds because literally no one else can. Abbie and Ichabod were the heart and soul, her teaching him about the modern world, him teaching her about the weird history she didn't know about. Now, Ichabod keeps talking a good gave and then totally disregarding Abbie at every turn. Abbie keeps rolling over and letting him. And Katrina, who could have been very helpful, keeps walking face-first into stupid situations without any hint of the power or knowledge she should have, and because he's her husband, Ichabod keeps ditching his own common sense to go along with it. Even the one time when she goes without his permission--something she shouldn't need anyway--he goes along with it, negating the need for her to have not told him, and leaving Abbie with this bad news that shouldn't have been dropped on her anyway.

Plus, with Corbin gone, and Frank in the assylum just when she was starting to trust him, Abbie is without guidance, and she hasn't looked elsewhere for it. Her relationship with Jenny was just starting to repair and is now, except for the one episode with their mother, almost entirely off screen because Jenny is off screen. Andy is dead again and has never even hinted at coming back, or even yet been mourned or reconciled, just ignored. Luke, who she once loved, is also dead and unmentioned. The new Sheriff is still entirely a blank wall, as far as how she even matters to the story. All interpersonal relating has been sacrificed to Ichabod coddling Katrina and Katrina continuing to say a lot of stuff she isn't proving.

And that doesn't even get into the new white guy who was supposed to be a needless love triangle, then took over most of Jenny's role without her arguing it or even working with him, and now is just sort of floating around having not much character. Or how Katrina was literally used in one of the grossest and most overdone bad tropes, just to make Moloch less interesting.

Ratings are down, and fans are pissed.

But! It's not dead yet!

At least, it doesn't have to be. There's still some episodes left this season, and it might yet turn out that this was all part of a long con on the part of the story--a gamble that they're hoping pays off with a huge season end.

It might be too late for that, but the story is only a little over half way through one bad season, coming off of one really good season, and it can be resurrected. Here's some ideas how:

Behind te scenes:

- Stop the writers from pi locally patting themselves on the back for the dumbest, grossest storylines that force the characters to act like they don't even know who they used to be.

- Make them pay more attention to the criticism.

On the show:

- Jenny back in the near-center of the story, working on her relationship with Abbie--including how, this season, she was ignored an awful lot.

- Frank, somehow not stupid, back from the dead--in a way that works with the plot: he's now the new War, and they have to make him remember who he is, or he's turning into a demon and they need to save his contested soul, or he's a ghost because of that contested soul and can't rest--and doesn't want to, because he has a job to do.

- Follow through with Jenny's promise to take care of his family--they've only just discovered that the supernatural exists, his daughter was possessed with no chance yet to process it, and now they've lost their dad. That's a chance to build the story, to give Jenny her own life, AND to make Frank's death matter, whether he comes back or not.

- Katrina is a whole other post in herself, but to start, give her actual power--or reveal that she's been actively hiding it; stop making her a ties up useless princess without some indication that she's doing it on purpose, or playing everyone, or at least learning that women don't allow themselves to be used like that anymore.

- Make Ichabod realize that he's been an ass all season, and actively try to repair all the friendships he's sacrificed for this wife who just causes trouble.

- Give Hawley something substantial to do, that involves character arc without shoehorning him in as a needless love interest no on has time for. Or, if he's going to be one anyway (though I think that got scrapped), give him enough story and development that he earns the right to be one. Let Jenny use her skills, though; he was a flipping full on Tomb Raider, and she's used none of that since he showed up.

- Bring back the whole rest of the world. The local Masons were all slaughtered by Headless, so who took their place? What are the Freemasons themselves doing about that? What about the Hessians who are hiding in plain sight all over the town, being a sleeper cell of evil? What about the good witches and bad witches that were established in the first episode, but that we've never met modern examples of? Who are they? What do they think about these Witnesses? How has magic-using changed in the two hundred years Katrina was in Purgatory? And what about the Native American wiseman and Big Ash? Are they another side to this battle, or aligned with one of the main powers? What about Templars? What about psychics? What about priests like the one from the first episode, who know what's what and are guarding the truth?

- Give Ichabod other context. His dad was a piece of work that he had to try to escape--did he never try to get his son back? What happened to his mom? Who were his friends and fellows who were not historical figures? And while we're at it, if she's determined to stay around and not be evil, let's get Katrina learning about the modern world and having opinions about it, her catching up on arcane lore, her making contact with local magic users and being amazed at how hippy-dippy it all is, her having friends and a life and flashbacks that don't involve only how she impacted Ichabod's life--give her a life and a history of her own. Tell us whether she was born magic or found it? Apprenticed or stole the knowledge? And once and for all whether she's good, bad, or on some unknown third side she would then speak for.

- Make the flashbacks useful again--not just explaining, but contrasting the old world and the new.

- Expand (or start to expand) on the whole Witness thing. Like, Ichabod and Abbie are a whole history of a country apart. Why are they the pair? Did each of them have a match in their own time that died, or was never called because they met each other, or was corrupted by evil? If the mantle of the Horsemen can be stripped, can Witness be stripped and given to someone else, too? If actual real demons are behind the Horsemen, are actual real angels behind the Witnesses, and are they the weird kind from the Old Testament, with too many faces and eyes and stuff? Are there two other Witnesses or Witness-likes who are supposed to evenly match the Four Horsemen, as opposites, and are they still out there? Have Abbie and Bod even started to access their power as Witnesses?

- Bring back Corbin. We barely scratched the surface of this guy who mentored both Abbie and Jenny in very different ways, while keeping them both separate and ignorant of each other's training. Why? How? What else does he know? Can he be their Jedi-Force-Ghost mentor, making them stronger and better? I think he can.

- Give us other villains. Opportunistic ghosts and spirits. Other demons with no shared plans who step up now that Moloch is deposed (if not actually dead). Old gods who have something to say about all this broo-ha-ha going on these days. Native creatures and creatures brought over from Europe with the settlers. New monsters made by the modern world. Back of on the main villain to every thre or four episodes, so the cast can learn and develop skills, and so his movements come as actual surprises, not a sort of "what the crap is he doing now" sort of annoyance because we're sick of him. Give him his mystery back. Give evil in general their mystery back. Remember how spooky those black-oil Harry-Potter-looking ghosts in the church looked?

- Bring it back to the biblical apocalypse and back off on the famous white guys history--flesh it out with other ideas of apocalypse that maybe Abbie knows more about, or that they have to find new experts on, and make friends with. And give us more of Grace and her tragic descendants--and maybe more like her, people who were or had been slaves, but had a secret mission. Native Americans (ancestors of the current dudes?) who knew about this stuff, too, and had to preserve their knowledge through the genocide of their people. Unrelated people through the last two hundred years who guarded history and were ignored by it, who saved sacred artifacts, who recorded weird events that can help our heroes, who tried to be Witnesses--and who were, but who died anyway, like when Buffy met the old Slayers and had to figure out how not to do whatever they did. 

- Take all the opportunities to comment on historical idiocy while also staying light and cheerful and optimistic and active--instead of ignoring those chances while being heavy and angsty in a bad way, and walking in circles without making any headway.

Me too, Ichabod! That's the dream of how the show could be, and that, I think, should be where it aims.

Barring that, cancel it now, but sign te whole mess up for Amazon Kindle Worlds or whatever it's called, and let the fans write how it should be, and get paid for it, and make it something amazing and powerful and world changing--since Fox, yet again, seems incapable of doing it. Or sell it to another channel that will allow it to be what it is--charming, cheerfully off the rails in the way that means they're doing unusual things and commenting on story tropes, not the way that means they don't know what they're doing, full of complex emotions and interactions, diverse characters moving through and impacting a complex and detailed world, and all the good stuff that a supernaturally-based story can bring, and that very few shows have, to date.

Give me that.