10 things you're missing out on if you're not watching #12Monkeys

1. An amazing story that's totally Binge-able
As of this moment, there are fifteen episodes. Thirteen for the first season, and two so far in the second. That means that you can watch all of them in one day, if you're really dedicated, and get the full extent of the series without ads or breaks or waiting on anything! It's immensely re-watchable; these writers have put in all sorts of hints and clues and foreshadowing that you pick up more and more of when you rewatch, but the benefit of watching all at once is that you can track all the storylines without gaps between them. It's basically one big story pretending to be episodic, and though jumping in the middle could be confusing, there's so much story crammed into so few episodes, you can start from the beginning and be caught up in a week. (Watch on Hulu or on the Syfy site for the views to count!)

2. Complexity that works
We're two episodes into season two, and there's no signs that it'll be anything less than mindboggling. Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett took the framework of the movie--scavenger from a dying future goes back in time to stop a plague--and blew it up to epic proportions successfully.

There's story happening in our time, in the future, in various points in the past. There's characters who exist in more than one time-frame, even if they're not time travelers, and there's time travelers on both sides of the good-bad divide. There's moral ambiguity starting with "if I kill this one guy, I save billions" and upping the ante through "if I save this one person, it's worth the whole world dying" vs "can I let this one person die if it means saving the world" and onward. There's a lot of character development in just about every character shown on screen, both in real time and in flashbacks--and even, occasionally, in alternate realities. There's time loops, and imposed cycles, and conspiracies, and multi-generational plans in play--and there's Cole, smashing through it like a bull in a china shop, hoping to make things right.

And the world itself! The present day world we know is stranger than we think. The future is a near-perfect apocalypse that's still happening, which feels innovative to me. When was the last time any apocalypse wasn't a postapocalypse? All points they visit are carefully made as real as each other, so that no matter where in time they are, no matter how strange it gets, everything has the same level of clear reality.

And it works. It's like a symphony, it works so well. Or one of those puzzle boxes that's so well made it feels like a gift.

3. The best use of time travel in, like, ever
The best thing: time travel has a cost--it makes you sick and you have to weigh every time you do it against risk and reward, and the only cure so far is literally creating paradoxes inside your own body, which is dangerous, to say the least.

Sometimes time travel is more of a vehicle, getting people from one place to another, but as season one unfolded and into season two, it's more and more an intrinsic piece of the story's structure. Things happen out of order because people who aren't time traveling are stuck in a straight line, past to present to future, and people who are time traveling can hop all along that line, regardless of the usual order of things. People on both sides are working with time and against time while also working against each other, trying to bend history to their own will--and it sometimes works, but mostly it causes more trouble that they then have to work out. It's the main process for several long-games to happen and to play out.

They give us clear indications of which times we're in and there's always a reason for why we're there, and the show as a whole literally couldn't happen without time travel. It's about time travel, not just featuring it.

4. Awesome female characters as complex as the males
The main villain is a woman.

Cassie is the female lead, and as S2 happens, she has switched places in the moral grey-areas with Cole--which is amazing, letting her be as violent and single-minded as he was, something ladies on TV don't get a lot.

The biggest wild card on the show is Jennifer, who is either insane, or the sanest person on the show, depending on where her story goes, but who exists at both ends of the time-travel and is definitely up to something.

The creator of the Splinter Project is wonderful, semi-sociopathic, damaged, brilliant Jones, who is some sort of post-apocalyptic life goal, since I'd be about her age in 2044.

And the only one of the enemy agents we've seen directly so far is a woman.

It's kind of amazing, having so many women around who aren't only love interests, or arm candy, or bit players. There's love in there, but they're also damaged and striving and have goals of their own. They're not defined by the men around them. They're smart and resourceful and as able to take care of themselves as everyone else.

5. An epic love story--literally
Cole and Cassie--Casserole--is a ship that sails itself, but in between them meeting and any confessions they might have in the future, there's plenty of time for story, and it's Big Story. Cole comes back from the future specifically to meet Cassie, Kyle Reece style. Cassie believes in him so strongly that she goes off script to save him more than once. Now that Cassie is compromised, Cole is staying by her side to make sure she's alright, despite differences in opinion about how the mission should work. In season one, Cole saves Cassie's life three times, because her dying always results in history going bad. Their love is literally what is saving the world in those cases. It's a ship for the ages!

6. Anything can happen
Because of the time travel and the way they can rewrite history, they can do insane things like kill a main character three times and fix it. They can have scenes and episodes in any time period they want. They can interact with each other out of order, and characters can interfere with each others' pasts and futures. The entire world can literally be changed, and it will make perfect sense within the story.

It's brilliant!

7. Kicking a squeamish TV system in the shins with awesomeness
TV as a whole doesn't seem to like things like complexity, male-female equality, gleefully being smart and assuming your fans are too, and taking risks with characters and plot and reality. You know, the stuff that the target audience is specifically looking for, and that critics love. By watching 12 Monkeys and making it more popular all the time, you're poking holes in that dumb idea that lowest-common denominator is the best way to go! By not watching, you're proving that only cheap, stupid shows get views.

So watch the good ones and improve TV as a whole!

8. Stopping the Standard Fate Of TV Scifi in it's tracks
Ask any scifi TV fan about shows they're still mad about, and most of the list will be shows that got messed with, ruined, or cancelled before they could tell their whole stories. That's become a cliche--but also a trap. People want good shows, but they don't trust that regular TV will take care of them, so on channels like Fox, lots of the potential viewership just doesn't bother watching. And that means that the show gets cancelled anyway--a self-fulfilling prophesy. Syfy really should be the exception to that, being specifically for scifi, but it's a channel like any other, and even if ratings are an inaccurate way to judge viewership these days, they still want the ratings.

The only way they can get them is if WE watch the shows we want TV to keep making. The only way we can break the cycle is to give them such good ratings that scifi proves that it can support an audience over many seasons the way a show about doctors or lawyers can, even if the numbers aren't as high as those.

Let's not let 12 Monkeys be the next Firefly; let's make it the next Star Trek--seven years and a slew of movies and books!

9. Some of the best fandom and creator-fan interactions around
The 12 Monkeys fandom is a great one, full of smart, talkative people who understand both the show and the genre it comes from. Better yet, the actors, writers, and creators on the show do their best to be very interactive, answering questions and giving hints and reblogging links. It's (so far--knock on wood) a remarkably adult and drama-free fandom with lots of ideas and thoughts and opinions, and it's a great fandom to belong to.

10. Hope
A lot of scifi drama lately gets mean. The heroes can't actually make any headway. People die for no reason (cough - Walking Dead - cough). Things are needlessly grim and violent. The overall tone is nihilistic and soul-crushing, focusing on how pointless everything is.

12 Monkeys isn't like that. The show itself is aware of how cool all of this stuff is, and while it gets a little dark and very dramatic, it doesn't go down the grim-for-grim-sake path. And at it's core, it's not about how people can't change anything, or how Big Events ruin lives. It's about characters interacting with each other and finding better ways. It's about how mercy and love are better than slavish fate. And that's amazing after BSG showed everyone such a dark version of scifi.

12 Monkeys isn't sappy, it's genuinely emotional. It's not mean, it's about being better than meanness. It takes the story about making the world better and looks at it from all sides and strives to actually do what it says. And the existence of the show can make the genre better, too, if we keep it alive.

Fanmusic Friday - I'm the One That's Cool

On spoilers

I'm going to be right up front and say that I don't care about spoilers, so this post is probably going to be slanted, but I'm going to try to make it rational and actually argue my point.

A few days ago, I almost started a fight on Tumblr inadvertently. I was liveblogging, and I saw a post in the tag in all caps being all like "don't give me any spoilers, guys!" and I answered something along the lines of "why are you on Tumblr, this place is a minefield", and the answer back was "because I can be". And I almost went bonkers. Instead, I texted a friend and got that stab of net-crazy out safely and in private, but the feeling of unease about the whole situation lingered.

Here's the thing: Spoilers are all over the internet, but they cluster in places like Twitter and Tumblr, places where people liveblog as stuff is actually happening for the direct purpose of talking about it with other fans while it's going on, as if we're all in the same room, watching together. And this is a known fact: Tumblr and Twitter are dangerous places to go if you haven't yet seen the show that is currently airing, especially if you're trying not to know what happens before you see it.

So why would anyone even sign on if they legitimately didn't want to be spoiled? And then if they do, isn't it kind of immature and hey-look-at-me to then try to get the whole of your feed to NOT talk about something they are specifically there to talk about?

I mean, it's like if I woremy  nice clothes and walked through Jackson Pollock's studio, right in front of his canvas, and was all "I know this is your space and all, but could you not splatter paint all over me, even though that's what you do?" Or, slightly less specific, does anyone really walk under the catwalks where they're painting walls if they're totally sure they don't want to get paint on them accidentally while the painters are just doing what they came there to do? If you do, you run the risk of ruining your clothes; if you don't want that, you walk around it until the danger has passed.

You can sign on, there's no law or anything keeping you from doing so, but if you're avoiding something, why not hang out somewhere else until the threat has passed? The internet is a big place, and there are books and actual TV and work and stuff outside of it. A few hours while the babble dies down won't hurt anyone. And if you do sign on, and the majority of people are talking about that thing you're avoiding, you did that to yourself. It's unfair to expect a pre-existing conversation to grind to a halt because you're standing in the middle of it.

And, of course, this brings up the whole issue of spoilers as a whole. PBS Idea Channel has a whole episode about it, where they try to come to a consensus on how to handle spoilers and don't really do it. Because the idea of spoilers is wildly personal. I commented there, somewhere in the feed, that my brother is constantly complaining that too many secrets are given away by trailers these days, while I'm constantly feeling the exact opposite--that trailers tell less and less about what is actually going on*; they're just showing the jokes or the scares.

And, personally, being a little spoiled makes me want to see / read / experience something that I previously didn't know about, haven't seen or read, or haven't been through myself. Knowing that there's this neat narrative thing, or that these two characters are totally in love and haven't noticed yet, or that the plot deals with this neat idea--those aren't spoiling anything; they're making me want to see them actually happen, they're the opposite of spoiling. And as for actual events in the plot? Knowing that someone died or that someone else is a turncoat or whatever beforehand doesn't change anything, really, because actually seeing it happen is different than being told what happened, filtered through someone else's perceptions and with often total lack of context.

I know that there are people who hate to know anything at all ahead of time.

I also know that that's damn near impossible, it's frustrating and geek-rage inducing, and that it's the responsibility of the person who doesn't want to know to make sure they don't spoil themselves, not the internet or culture as a whole to shelter them. I mean, Seth Meyers waiting a year to talk about Game of Thrones on his show is a nice gesture, and it shows how sweet he is, but it's also excessive--a year is about a decade in fan-time. And things that have been around for ages, but that someone just hasn't seen yet? You can't spoil Jaws or Alien or Frankenstein or anything Austin, dudes. They're spoofed and commented on so often, there's nothing left but the actual experience of watching it all in order, for yourself, and that's on you; no one can change that or take that away from you, or do it for you.

I state clearly that I'm not spoiler-free, because to me, it's more important to talk about things and to process them that way, than it is to avoid giving something away to someone who hasn't seen it yet. Media is made to be talked about, and this is a blog, where I talk about things. I won't go out of my way to give away the ending to a movie I'm walking out of, while people are still standing in line to see it. I won't talk about something in a closed group if the people in the group haven't seen what I'm talking about. I make a point of asking whether people want to know or not when I'm in small conversations, and then respecting that.

But the internet is public. And these sites are specifically where people go to discuss things; the majority of people will be seeing something as it happens if it's something they want to see, and they're there to talk about it.

If someone doesn't want to know the details yet, there are thousands of other tags to be on, or sites to be on, or life-events to take care of. When they're ready, the discussion will still be there--unless they walk into the middle of it and shut it down, and why the heck would they do that?

Use common sense:

• if you're avoiding spoilers, don't go where the spoilers live
• if you're in a closed group, make sure everyone's on the same page before getting spoilery
• if you're saying you don't want spoilers, and then you're always courting them, maybe you actually don't hate spoilers, maybe you love getting into conflicts
• if you're going to go where the discussions are, be respectful and understand that other people almost definitely aren't going to shelter you when you can shelter yourself, and don't derail

And that's the last I'm going to say about spoilers as a topic.

NOTES:
*I mean, who knew that Brave was about a mother and daughter relationship, or that Frozen was about sisters subverting the Disney trope of true love? If I'd known that, I wouldn't have taken so long to see it!

How to survive a whole summer hiatus from your favorite show

Now is the summer of our discontent. Or, more specifically, the time when new episodes of all* the Good Shows are ending / ended, and the reruns and summer-reality-tv-fill-ins are just beginning. If you're like me, the whole idea of a cliffhanger just about ruins your calm, and the concept of waiting for things is not one of your many talents.

So here's some ways to survive until the fall**, when shows come back.

1. Rewatch everything that exists up until this point. Bonus points if you liveblog / livetweet it and then discus every minute detail with the fandom until the show comes back.
2. Really get involved in the fandom. Easiest if you're already rewatching. Find the discussion sites--I like Tumblr, but Twitter is popular, too, and easier to get feedback from the actual actors and crew. Find the fansites and groups. Start making fanart. Watch vids on YouTube that put everything into different contexts. Debate the merits of plot points, worldbuilding, characterization. Go into the new season so full of knowledge.
3. Read fanfic. There are some very dedicated fic writers who will fill the whole summer gap with amazing stories--I once spent a summer reading what was basically a whole alternate season for Stargate SG1, and years later did the same thing for The Mentalist. The really good writers have the characters down pat, but don't have to listen to producers and network people, and so can do things the shows will never do!
1. And, of course, there's also all the bad fic, weird fic, crossover fic, and endless supplies of both fluff and smut...
4. Write your own fic. I wouldn't recommend publishing it if you're planning on being an actual paid author unless you're really good at fending off lawsuits and fan-based crazy***, but even if no one else in the world ever sees it, it can ease the pain and work through the stress of waiting forever. 
1. Then again, if you're writing Veronica Mars fic, or GI Joe, or fic for just about anything from Wildstorm Comics, you can set the stories up on Kindle Worlds and become an official part of the fannon, recognized by the actual people who actually made the actual thing. Those properties are outside the scope of shows on summer hiatus just now, but sometimes revisiting an old fandom can help with the pain of a current one, too.
5. Get the DVDs and look at all the behind-the-scenes stuff, the deleted scenes, the gag reel, and cry over how perfect they all are. This applies especially to Supernatural, when you're talking about epic gag reels, but pretty much any show worth the cost of its DVDs will have nummy nuggets of awesome to give you on the special features.
6. Go back to something beloved that's no longer painful. Fandoms rarely go away--they just end and their active status gets replaced by newer shows that eat your brain. It's sometimes useful to go back to something complete that you loved before, and remember why you loved it--and distract yourself from the current ones.
7. Find a new Fandom. There's never enough time in the day / week / season to see every episode of every show you want to watch, so the summer, when the series that take up the most of your time leave, is a great time to check out those other shows that you missed this past season--or in previous entire runs.
8. Change mediums. This discussion is about easing the pain of tv shows, so why not switch it up and feed the fandom centers of your brain a string of movies, or a bunch of books, or something made for Netflix or the Internet, or that new album from that musician you like? A brain with a lot of other  interests in it is a happy brain, and a happy brain is less likely to take it so personally when a show does something crazy, and implode on you, ruining your life.
9. Unplug entirely. How terrible! But sometimes, a body and a brain needs to take time off the things we love that are eating up too much of our conscious minds as much as it needs to take time away from the things we hate that eat up our lives.

How do you deal with hiatus?

NOTES:

*Well, BBC has some good stuff just starting, and some of the expensive pay channels do, and there's TBS, but all the network shows that give us more episodes a year and therefore more to feed off of are done.

**Or the spring, in the case of Sleepy Hollow...

***Like Cassandra Clare.