Professional Fangirls Danyi and Sami participated in the first 12 Monkeys aftershow!

And the link to watch on the site in case this one gets wonky!

                 

Letter from the Editor - June 2016

Welcome to June, Fangirls! The weather is evening out into endless heat in the Northern Hemisphere, nights are coming later and leaving sooner, and the movies are giving us a few more of the big summer blockbusters! Here at ProFangirl, we're still expanding and we're looking to pick up a few more girls (or girl-identifiers) to add to the crew! Email me to see what you need to do.

I spent a lot of the last month sick, and as being sick makes me even more introverted, thinking about what I want Professional Fangirl to be. My conclusion, really, is that we're on the right track, but I want it to be more. So we're going to be filling her out in the second half of the year, and I hope you're all going to like what we have in store for you!

Here's what TV has for us this month:

• Cleverman, an Australian scifi show about the Dreamtime
• The last season of Beauty and the Beast
• Outcast, Kirkman's new show that is about demons instead of zombies
• Preacher hits it's real run through this month
• A new Voltron special on Netflix
• Hell on Wheels finally gets to finish up it's last season
• Last Ship comes back
• Norman Reedus picks up a reality show about mortorcycles in his downtime from making TWD
• Wrecked, meant to be Lost if it was a comedy starts it's first season
• Dead of Summer wants to bring us 80s-set campground horror on TV

And in movies, we've got:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2
• Warcraft
• Finding Dory
• Independence Day 2 (finally!)

Events this month:

• 9th: Donald Duck Day
• 16th: Captain Picard Day
• 30th: Meteor Watch Day

What're you looking forward to?

#12Monkeys Monkey Musings 4 - I have a problem with Aaron Marker

ETA: I almost didn't publish this because it feels like I'm picking a fight when really I'm asking someone to change my mind? Let's talk, Monkeys.

We in the fandom have been talking a lot lately about who the Witness is. Personally, I think it's going to be Sam, Ramse’s son--mostly because it'll then all literally be one person’s fault, because that one person fought so hard to make sure that kid existed--or one of the Joneses because they are the ones who broke nature to invent time travel. Story-wise, and based mostly on my own personal writing habits and understanding of stories, those are my favorite theories.

But actually--if the Witness is actually a villain and not misunderstood or trapped*--on an emotional level, I’m hoping it's Aaron Marker. Because he's a punk and a weenie and I want him to keep being a villain and not get out of owning up to his weenie-ness so easily as dying.

See, here's the thing. I have a problem with Aaron Marker. The fact that Cassie is so pro-Marker in her anger right now has brought into focus what it is for me: he is a problem.

Cassie loved him in the beginning and it looked like they were set up for a fantastic rich-and-influential-people life. But then Cassie, the woman he's engaged to, who he wants to spend the rest of his life with, is kidnapped--and he doesn't support her through her trauma?

Okay, I get that she's talking about time travel and killer viruses and it looks like she's snapped, but he's the one person in the world who should have been there for her, and he wasn't. From what we’ve seen, he mostly wanted her to stop talking about it and never think about it again--to pretend she was still the same as before--and get back to their lives as if nothing had happened. As if that wouldn't have driven her insane for real.

Then, when he does know for sure that she’s been telling the truth all this time, we never see him apologize for being so unfair to her for two whole years. He just, again, tries to pick up where they left off. He doesn't give her space to mourn her dead partner she was on the phone with when he died, that we see, he just wants to sweep it all under the rug. Again. And she’s lost and lonely and grieving and without purpose again, and goes along with it. Before Cole comes back after Chechnya, she doesn’t look as okay with all this as Marker does, no matter what she says.

And then, when that's blown up again, and they find out they still need to combat the end of the world, his third chance to get on board with the mission the woman he loves is dedicated to whether she likes it or not, he sells them out.

Now, I don't doubt that he loved her. If he's alive, I don't doubt that he’ll say he still does. But it was a small, closed-doors, narrow-minded sort of love that led him to literally be okay with killing the whole world if he gets to keep her--despite the fact that she had already told him that's not acceptable and he knew that she'd been working on this problem for two years. That’s what bothers me the most about his tactics: she specifically said that’s not how this is going to go, and he goes that way anyway--and tries to force her when she won’t go willingly. He was willing to not only sell out Cole, but to cut Cassie off from the only purpose she has in life now, and to hold her hostage while something she could have helped avoid happens all around her.

That's not a good man.

And it's my opinion that he would have still been that man even if the plague was never going to happen and Cole had never shown up. He proved to be the sort who isn't far-sighted enough to think of the many, the sort who isn't secure enough to let his potential wife make her own choices or trust her own experience, and the sort who more than once tries to avoid both dealing with big issues and taking responsibility for actions taken because of them. They would have gotten married and been rich and powerful--and then some other crisis would have shown who he really is.

For all his faults, Cole always believed in Cassie’s intrinsic value and capableness--which, in the beginning, is probably one of the things that drew her to him. He accepted her for what she is, and didn't try to make her fit some mold he had predetermined for her. In fact, he told her not to change, to stay who she is.

And now, in her anger, Cassie has decided that Marker was some wonderful thing and that Cole systematically took that from her. It irks me. I have infinite compassion for the trauma she's going through, but I really hope we get some time with her dealing with what's happened to her and realizing that Marker wasn't good for her, that he never had her own wishes at heart and often directly tried to stop her from making decisions as if she wasn't an autonomous adult, and that Cole has never systematically done anything. I think she’s mourning the life she thought she had and lost more than the person Marker actually was, and is avoiding dealing with the fact that he was always a weenie and they would have all died if Cole hadn’t smashed into her life like he did.

Marker made his own bed. And Cassie needed fuel for anger to keep her alive and sane, so she canonized him and blocked all that, and blamed Cole.

But he's still a weenie.

Think of the reality check Cassie will get if they find out the Witness is Marker. If he's justifying everything he's done with his love for her--if he’s upped his game from letting the world die to actively making it die in an attempt to keep her. Cole will also take the blame for having beaten him and not made sure he was dead in that fire, but that beating was directed by Cassie of her own free will. She made him, and he made himself, and they've been against him all along. That's a story I would love to watch.

I love Noah Bean, so I’m inclined to like him, but he’s made a character that severely bothers me on a personal level--and I think that’s some genius casting. Take this inherently likable guy, and make him this hard-to-define low-grade ordinary-standing-in-the-way-of-epic bad. Make him less bad than the actual baddies, and therefore more ambiguous. And pit him against the heroes. Then, maybe one day, revealing him as a greater villain than they thought. That’s brilliant, and it’s worked so well so far. What potential! 

I fully expect the show to throw every wrench** at me on this topic, like all others, but the story feels unfinished and in the middle of the action, and I’m willing to have my opinion changed...because it’s not a great opinion of the man right now. And, of course, with actual change thrown in, maybe they've already altered him and his story, but still have their own memories of before to deal with...

*Olivia is making me think that either a) the Witness is not telling everyone everything and is more devious than we’ve been led to believe, or b) she’s just saying whatever she wants and calling it the will of the Witness, which would make her worse AND bring the opportunity that she’s USING the Witness rather than serving him.

**Monkey wrenches!

Sami on Captain America : Civil War

Okay, so I went into Civil War worried about several things: 

• The movie being too grim
• How they were going to handle the divide in the team and how annoying and contrived it was going to be
• How much boring and depressing politics was going to be in the discussions about that bill
• Why Nat wasn't on Cap's side
• How they were going to handle having so many people in a movie that's supposed to be about Cap

But I really don't think I needed to worry. Captain America : Civil War is not a perfect movie, and not as fantastic as Winter Soldier, but it's still really good and better than Age of Ultron. Spoilers ahead, so don't keep reading if you don't want them!

I really hated the marketing that kept trying to force everyone to pick sides. I think it was unneccessary for the fans to be divided as well as the team, and my favs were spread out across both sides. So that was part of why I wasn't super happy about the idea of everyone splitting down the middle, but in the actual moment of the movie--though I still don't like the advertising--it didn't matter that much. Everyone was just doing what they thought was right, and Cap and Tony actually were forcing everyone's hands, so it was in-line with the theme and the feel of the film itself.

Also, one of my least favorite things about the way this Phase has been going is Tony being more and more afraid of everything. It's fully understandable, and I think it was handled well in his own third movie, but in Ultron it was making him make really stupid decisions, and in Civil War, though he was dealing with it by trying to atone for those stupid decisions, it made him come across as an asshole, manipulating the people he was trying to protect.

The part of that that struck home the best, for me, was where he considered the Avengers his family and just wanted to keep his family together--because his original family hadn't stayed together very well at all. They could have played up the idea of family a little more and not the idea of government oversight--which is distasteful, the way the real world is, but I guess that is why it's there to begin with--but whatever. When Tony was a broken kid looking for a home, that's when he didn't seem like a jerk, and that's when I liked his half of the story best.

I didn't like that all his reasoning was so small--you want to pinion your own wings because you have no self control and you want to keep your girlfriend from dumping you? That was handled better in Ironman 3, and I thought it was resolved. The family angle was bigger and more grand, if you ask me.

Cap's half of the story was more emotionally true, I feel. He'd been looking for Bucky since he lost him, and now he finally had the lead he'd been searching for, only to get it at exactly the worst possible time to be associated with the Winter Soldier. And he did anyway, because Bucky needed him. I like Steve as a rebel for good--he saw exactly how corrupt the government had become last movie and he didn't want a part of that this time...but all his talk about taking your own blame? How exactly was he going to do that for all the literal and emotional damage he has helped cause? Come on, Cap. You gonna go and rebuild those dozens of buildings yourself?*

Bucky is where the heart of the movie was. Sebastian Stan did such an amazing job with all the variations on a character that barely talks--creepy, brainwashed Winter Soldier; shell-shocked survivor trying to lay low and disappear; almost-Bucky trying to deal with what he'd done and figure out how much blame he should get, since he's aware that he's been controlled, but also that it was literally him who did those things. In the reveal scene with Tony's parents, that came to a head: he knew Howard before all this. They had friends in common even if they weren't friends themselves. And he killed him because he was told to and as Winter Soldier, he couldn't not.

Hearbreaking.

It would have been nice to see what Bucky would have done with four other Winter Soldiers, but it was clever how that was side-stepped, and it showed the villain's deviousness really well: he knew exactly how to push all their buttons, and they all fell for it. Now they're all divided and it seems like most of them don't even know just how manipulated they were.

It's a movie about manipulation, I guess.

All the really fun stuff came from everyone else, and there was lots of everyone else involved. Almost too many, but they were handled pretty well, with everyone getting a few moments to shine.

Wanda being still too untrained to really do this super-hero stuff, and her being so upset about her mistakes was a good sign on how her character is going. I really liked how Steve took her under his wind as sort of a little sister. And I liked how totally smitten Vision is with her, but how they didn't force her to like him back the same way, yet. The fact that she's the only one who has a chance against him is encouraging that they're equals if they go with the romance angle, but it also sets them up against each other if they go with comic-stories for either of them about being overpowered. Because damn is Vision unstoppable, and if she can match him, that means she's unstoppable, too. In the big airport-faceoff, both of them were pretty alarming.

Nat actually made sense being on the side of signing the Accords, but I was so much more happy when she switched sides like I'd hoped she would. And it was refreshing not having to have her be the stand-in for missing love interests...though the whole Sharon Carter thing was weird. I loved Nat and Clint basically playing along and not actually fighting each other when everyone else was being super serious about the fight. Clint is a gift, and why don't the two of them have their own movie yet?**

Ant-Man was so much fun, even though his mask made him look like a weird robot baby. I love Scott, and I can't wait until his second movie. All the current fun in the MCU is in these side heroes, and he brings a lot of it here where it's needed to balance the tragedy that is Bucky Barnes. 

Spiderman was GREAT, but not how Tony went and paid him off and threatened to expose his identity to get him to work on Team Ironman. Like. The kid is still in high school. He's an infant compared to these guys you're setting him against, and that's crazy irresponsible and potentially dangerous. Good thing he's damn near indestructible.

Rhodey did not deserve any of this.

Sam Wilson's "I really hate you" was probably his best line in the movie, but my fav part with him was when he and Bucky, both pretty large dudes, were crammed into that tiny car, waiting on Steve. Oh, my god, so much fun, both the argument over seats, and the bro-nod after that weird Steve-Sharon kiss. So great.

And Black Panther! Considering how most of his screentime was devoted to kicking Bucky's ass, he did really well with an enlightened revenge arc--he really seemed to be learning the lessons that everyone else was sort of not learning; he pays attention and lets other people make mistakes instead of making them himself, and that's really interesting in a superhero story. Also, it's amazing that both sides basically respected that he's an actual king and kept his honors.

I think Civil War actually wrapped up the Steve-and-Bucky trilogy more than the Captain America trilogy we thought we were watching up till now, and the main purpose was to mix up the teams more than to tell either Steve or Bucky's stories, but it's a pretty good movie for all that. This obsession the MCU has with everything being OMG THERE'S TWO--yeah, I got tired of that with the two SHIELDs and two HYDRAs, and I'll be glad when they get that out of their system and stop with it already, but it'll be interesting to see how a UN-sanctioned Avengers team and a rogue Avengers team will interact. 

Which one is going to recruit each of the new heroes as they pop up? Which team will Hulk and Thor side with when they get back***, assuming they're not going to just be problems for the teams to deal with? If they are problems to deal with, how will that go with half the team being their friends and half being people who came after they disappeared?

I love that so much of this movie was about the absolute damage these people cause, but it would have been nice if they'd maybe not caused more and proved the point that they do need to be kept in check--it would have made Cap's view stronger if he'd told his team NOT to destroy that airport, those planes, all that cargo and people's belongings, all those cars...Like, did you not listen at all to that totally basic part of the UN powerpoint? 

I also love that Bucky's "I'm not going to kill anyone" became like a theme for the movie. The badguys killed people, but the goodguys made a point not to...though they were totally destroying property, still, and probably breaking a lot of bones.

Things I really want to know now:

• What is going to happen to Bucky? Who can help him--both with his arm and with all the Hydra mess inside his head?
• What happened to That Book? Are there other copies of it, or is that the only one? 
• Just how freaking awesome IS Wakanda? I'm really looking forward to Black Panther now! I wanna see that one lady actually get to kick someone's butt.
• Will Seb get his wish and get a love story with Nat?
• Can we trust whoever is in charge of Zemo now? And what's going on with his plan, all creepily alluded to?
• Where are Steve and Co going to set up shop now that they're technically criminals, even if they're still acting as heroes? What resources will they have?****
• Who else was at that mid-ocean supermax? Did they get out, too?
• Are the new Avengers going to get their own movies? I mean, I want Nat and Clint to get one first, but then, can we get Wanda and Vision?
• Also Falcon. Doesn't that nerd deserve a movie of his own after all he's been through?

Still lingering stories I want to see come back:

• I mean, Zola can't just be gone, right? Am I really supposed to believe that he uploaded his brain to thousands of too-early-tech computers and survived for decades developing an algorithm to track very specific people, and then he'd just let himself get exploded like that?
• Hulk. Like, where. What's he doing? Also Fury. Also Thor. Also, where the heck was Maria Hill--doesn't she work for Tony's security firm they've not done much with now?
• How does any of this affect or interact with SHIELD? Because that show is practically in an alternate universe, it has so little effect on the mainstream, and it's getting annoying. Are we going to have to have three more seasons of this before the Inhumans movie forces them to just admit that Coulson is alive and everything is really stupid with his agency? Come on, this is exactly what SHIELD is supposed to be dealing with, and the Avengers have been without backup for YEARS now because of all this fuckery on the show.
• Are the Secret Avengers / whatever the heck the Inhuman team on the show is called ever going to have anything to do with the other Avengers?
• Why are they not making shorts anymore? Because seriously, they could do a lot with these movies that don't exist as shorts--a few Nat and Clint side-missions, Rhodey and Falcon and Wasp and randoms crossovers that they can't work into the movies, etc could all do great things in the shorts. Hell, they could made a whole series based on those who who were recruited after Avegners by Sitwell, and what they've been doing since SHIELD fell!

So, overall, I really enjoyed the movie (despite any complaining above), and I'm excited to see what happens next! I just wish that there had been more actual attempt not to destroy every single thing everywhere, when that was one of the points of the Accords half the movie was fighting. It's going to be super interesting to see how a world that technically doesn't have a superpowered Avengers team anymore--since one half is in hiding and the other half has to get permission--is going to deal with all the weird stuff coming up in the next few movies. 

And I'm super-interested in what's going to lead up to the Infinity Wars and the union of the cosmic MCU and the earth-MCU.

*I would, however, pay good money to see a movie where some ex-Shield nobodies who were used to the grunt work set up a massive construction firm dedicated to cleaning up after superhero fights. You listening, Feige? I'd write that for you.
**I'd write that movie, too, though I'd probably wind up writing them as a triad with Clint's wife, and get shot down on that.
***Weird that the Avengers don't know where either of them are for what could be two years? When will Hulk get his own movie? Weren't they looking for them the way Steve's been looking for Bucky?
****Hank Pym really doesn't like Starks, so maybe he'll foot the bill?

May the Fourth Be With You! - In which Sami rambles about her relationship with Star Wars

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was my very first movie. I was 11 days old, and when the wompa jumped out at Luke, it was almost Baby's First Headwound, but I think the existence of the film that early in my life left more impression on me than my mom almost dropping me. I grew up in a scifi-friendly household*, playing Star Wars with my brother and sister. I was Sami Skywalker, because I wanted to be a Jedi and Leia didn't have a sword. My brother was usually Han, which I also wouldn't have minded being, because he was cool, but you couldn't fight with my brother once he made a stand when we were kids. My sister, who was probably four or so at this point, was an Ewok because Ewoks don't talk.**

If I blame David Bowie in Labyrinth for my love of bad guys in eyeliner, I blame Han Solo for my love of smugglers that has taken me all the way to Captain Mal in Firefly and beyond, with detours into various pirates movies and any number of space-rebellion stories in between. I think Han and Leia were one of my very first favorite love stories, but there was never a time when they weren't together (until recently), so I don't call them a ship--more like Ship Goals, because they were so great together.

I grew up in a world where Star Wars was always on TV somewhere. My aunt had the Endor movie that people like to not talk about. We had toys. It was this wonderful thing that had always been there, and as I got older, I started to feel lucky that I had lived in a time when Star Wars existed, you know? It introduced me to the Hero's Journey***. It's a huge world and everyone in it has a story and a name. There's spaceships and lasers! I love a spaceship. And best of all, it's got this idea that even people who grow up in the middle of nowhere can be awesome heroes, even tiny angry girls can be fantastic rebel leaders. 

When I was in high school and into college, the prequels started. It was SO GREAT that we were getting new Star Wars! I loved that they existed. I loved that someone was actually making them. I did not love that they weren't super-great, and lacked most of the humor and heart that the original trilogy had--probably because the CGI sucked the life out of it, and they somehow took Natalie Portman, who had been so good in Leon and made her stiff and strange and never really let her be as cool as I wanted he to be. There was a time when I actively hated them, but I've since been softened by decades of "what if they were good" fan edits and rewrites, and none of those awesome stories would exist if the prequels hadn't been made. And also, the new ones probably wouldn't exist, because they proved there was still a market for these stories.

But the prequels came with the original trilogy being re-released into the theatres, and even though I think almost all the special-edition changes were unnecessary, it was so good to see them all shined up and big-screen again. And, of course, the anti-special-edition-ness--which I think, for me, was eventually more because they refused to let us own both editions and were therefore trying to edit my past and what it meant to me--meant I got to go to a con and get my grubby paws on the originals like a rebel smuggler myself!

I wasn't thrilled when Disney bought Star Wars. It also bought Marvel at that time, and that just sort of felt like they were greedily gobbling up everything geeks love, making a geek monopoly we wouldn't have any alternative to if it sucked. 

It didn't suck.

Now we live in a world where we're going to be down-right SPOILED with Star Wars. A movie a year until it stops making money. Episode VII was exactly what I wanted it to be--aware of the originals, but it's own story with awesome new people and wonderful practical effects, and a whole new chapter that doesn't need to fill gaps or condense the past--my biggest issue with the prequels is that they make the rise of the empire and the fall, like, twenty years apart, which makes it seem like Luke is less of a big deal. Before they existed, it sounded like he was bringing down an unstoppable thing that had been around so long there were only a few people fighting it; but if it rose around the time he was born, that's only one generation, and there should have been SO MANY people who remembered what it was like before and fought back. They stole Luke's thunder.

And even better, now, we get to have new Star Wars stories! Flashbacks. Flashes sideways to tell about other stories happening around the edges of the stories we have. A whole new, wide-open future without the need to read seven hundred books that filled all the gaps already. 

I'm so happy that Star Wars can be part of this current Golden Age of Geekiness! It would have been lacking without the galaxy far far away.

What are your memories of Star Wars?

 *My dad's idea, seeing Star Wars in the theatre. Also my dad's idea, watching Star Trek when I was five. I don't see why there's such a divide in the fanbase, like you can't possibly like both at once. They're different things!
**As in "Shut up, Ewoks don't talk!" We were not lovey-dovey siblings.
***Which I have sort of decided needs to be made more...equal, because the proposed Heroine's Journey is boring and why should be boys get all the fun?

#12Monkeys Monkey Musings #3 - On changing time but not changing emotional fallout

They did it! They managed to change time! Cole will never have to stand in 2017 and watch Cassie die in his arms because the virus doesn't happen till 2018 now! But that means he remembers it and it drives him, but she'll never get to that point--if she does, it'll be a different point now, with a different set of circumstances leading up to it.

And that's what a time travel show is about.

See, to have that scene from Cassie's point of view, they'd have to fail so spectacularly that time resets and the plague goes back to 2017, but now, the plague isn't even the point. Whatever the Messengers are doing is, and it looks an awful lot like they're changing time, too--or making it so there is no time to change?

We still have the issue of the space between 2016 and 2044 that got shifted. There's enough more people in the future now that there's music and radio broadcasts, but our four mains don't remember any of that because they were protected from being rewritten by the serum--how long before Dr Eklund and a restored Lasky aren't the only major personal difference that they stumble across? Because Cassie and Cole and Ramse and Jones are working on the assumption that things have only changed a little and their own perceptions of the future are close enough...but what if they aren't? What if they're now missing vital pieces of information? Things that matter to whatever else is out there--or now out there--that hasn't come to the front of their attentions yet, because they don't know to look for it?

Old!Jennifer probably saw time changing because that's what she does. But Team Splinter doesn't notice a difference. Deacon doesn't. He still hates Ramse and has a rivalry with Cole, but what if there are slight differences in his history that make him different--like, if Ramse wasn't trying to get himself killed last episode, what if he didn't know not to push that button because OldTimeline!Deacon wouldn't have had it, and NewTimeline!Deacon does?

And regardless of all that, Cole and Cassie didn't change, and everything that has piled up between them since she didn't save him from Chechnya last season, all that stuff they haven't dealt with at all, is still there and came with them into the new timeline. Everything that softened Cole since then--learning to dance, eating good food he didn't have to fight for, seeing what sort of world he was saving, meeting Cassie and being impressed by her compassion and her competence--had the flip side of making her hard. It stopped him from killing and taught her how to kill, and did both after she was already mad that he'd let her former fiancee get killed horribly. She thinks Aaron died protecting her from Cole, and seems to have forgotten that he'd sold them out to do it. Cole saved her instead of letting her die, but he did it by stranding her in the exact world that happens because everything she stands for fails--as of this moment, they manage to push the plague back, to delay the apocalypse, but she still fails to save the world, and that's the mission she's given herself since Cole first showed up in 2013 and changed her life.

And they haven't dealt with any of that. 

There's piles of guilt and resentment and crossed wires between them, and while Cole was in 2016 hoping and learning lessons and remembering Cassie fondly, Cassie was in the apocalypse learning how to kill people, seeing what failure costs, and getting trained by the man Cole specifically didn't want to be like. 

And it looks like all that is starting to fall out now. It's blocking Cole and Cassie from making up. It's stopping them from even being as good a team as they were, because she's convinced now that she can't trust him, which hurts him, and makes them both wary and questioning when they need to be able to depend on each other.

Cassie tore Cole's picture in half. That was sort of mean, but it makes a point: they're not together, and the picture isn't how things are. She tore it right down the middle between the two of them. But she didn't shred it or toss it--she gave the two pieces back, and they could be mended, and that's symbolic, too. Maybe on some level, she didn't want to completely burn that bridge. She just wants to keep poking at Cole until she gets the reaction that she wants--and guilty sweetness doesn't seem to be it.

It hurts, watching them with this wedge between them. But it's also wonderfully well done--and it's perfect continuity. How often have people on TV really just needed to talk something out and never gotten around to it? Never even gotten around to admitting that there should be emotional continuity? But 12 Monkeys is a bigger and more thoughtful show than that, and it's taking the rocky road that means characters get what they deserve, and it's amazing.

Letter from the Editor - May 2016

Whoo, Fangirls! It's almost summer here in the Southern US and starting to actually behave like spring in some of the more northerly places we all come from! Personally, I hate the heat, but I LOVE summer movie season--it's what always kept having a Memorial Day-adjacent birthday from being horrible, and it means I always get a blockbuster to go to every year! This year, it's X-Men: Apocalypse, third and last of this particular trilogy, though I hope they're not done all together. I like the X-Men movies (XM were always my favs since I was a 12 year old scrounging change to go buy comics), and with Deadpool and another attempt at Fantastic Four coming to that world, it'd be cool to see what the new-timeline team is doing now, you know? Other than Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead hanging out in an empty mansion...

We here at PFg are continuing to make everything more awesome for our readers, and there's lots to talk about this month! If you have anything you want us to talk about, or if you're a lady (or identify as one) and would like to offer a guest post, contact us and we'll see what we can do!

Here's what's happening in geekery this month:

• Spring shows are all wrapping up! There'll be at least a few season-ender discussions on them!
• Returning shows: Penny Dreadful (tonight / 1st), Person of Interest (last season, 3rd)
• New Shows: Houdini & Doyle (2nd), Preacher (22nd)
• Events: 
• 3rd - Paranormal Day
• 4th - Star Wars Day / May the Fourth Be With You and then Revenge of the Sixth!
• Captain America 3 (6th in the US)
• Free Comic Book Day (7th)
• Limerick Day on the (12th)
• George Lucas Day (14th)
• Drawing Day (16th)
• Pizza Party Day (20th)
• Alan Turing Day (23rd)
• Geek Pride Day / Towel Day (25th)
• National Paper Airplane Day (26th)
• X-Men: Apocalypse (27th)
• My birthday (28th)*

What're you guys up to this month?

April's most popular post happened yesterday and comes from Kaelyn!

A Beginner's Guide to Tabletop Games

*My birthday is totally an event because I'm the fearless leader, yall.

#TabletopDay - My fav tabletop games

 Do you like freaking enormous games that take all day to play, an hour to set up, and that you'll probably play wrong for a while but you'll still love?? The Arkham Horror is for you! The base game is already big--so big that I wound up buying more dice to play it regularly*. But now there are several expansions that make it even more epically huge (which I haven't gotten to play yet, much to my woe), and it's easily and all-day thing if you want it to be.

But it's so cool, you guys. Even though the last time I played I wound up mostly Lost In Time And Space.

Here's what I most love about it:

• It's a whole story--there's so many things to track and follow and work around
• It's not competitive, it's collaborative--there's no point in being mean to the people you're playing with because it's all of you against the board, and the board will probably win anyway, so work together
• It's got lots of little tokens and bits and stuff to mess with and read and move around
• Dice!
• It's freaking gorgeous, dudes.

If you're in the mood for a faster game that involves jokes about sheep and wood, this is the one for you! It's not complicated, how it goes is mostly about how well you pick your original placement, but it's super satisfying collecting resources, trading with neighbors, and building things up. There's a number of expansions, too, so you can get bigger and fancier stuff going on, and it's easy to learn.

Also, it's all modular--the board changes every time you play!

Back when we were kids, we lived overseas in places where there wasn't often TV and where cable hadn't been invented yet. We read books, or we played games--all those classic family games like Monopoly, Candy Land, Life, Trivial Persuit. But my fav was always Parcheesi.

It's cooler than Sorry, though basically the same sort of game. It's less likely to be missing pieces than Chinese Checkers. Our copy had really nice wooden pieces that felt nice in our little-kid hands and looked like candy. It's easy enough for kids to play, but fancy enough that adults can play, too, without feeling dumb. It just always felt really classy to me, and I still love it.

What're your favorite games? Share in the comments and I'll start a list of games I need to check out!

 *Well, my friend bought them for me. They have my name on them. I love them.

#TabletopDay - The meanest game of Uno you will ever play

Uno is one of those games you learn when you're a kid because it's easy and it's fun and it's not too fussed about how many people play it. It's also mean. Like, seriously, the only physical fight I've ever gotten into was over a three-person hand of Uno--the other two, my best friends, teamed up to skip or reverse on me for twenty minutes straight and the only time I got a go was when I had to pick up cards, so I kicked one of them. She hit me, so I hit her back, and then she bit me and tore my nightgown with her steel-enforced teeth. 

Good times.

Anyway, Uno is also one of those games where you have lots of house rules* AND one where there's lots of variation-decks so you can mix it up.

My brother and I recently created the meanest house rule ever, and it will murder your game and make all your friends hate you, and it's awesome.

It's this:

• If someone drops any Draw card on you, you can avoid having to draw those cards by playing ANOTHER draw card that matches, and the next person has to draw the cards listed on BOTH cards. 

The best part of this rule? There's no limit to it. When we were playing, we had a hand that circled twelve times and the last person had to draw more cards then there were in the draw deck, and we wound up adding a second deck to the game!

It's hilarious, you guys, everyone waiting for the time when there's no more Draw cards and someone has to pick up the whole deck. Everyone holding so many cards that they can't find the ones they're looking for because their hands are too small to fan them out properly. The wails of the lost as they take forever to get through all the cards they're holding.

It's the best house rule ever.

What're your best house rules?

*Ours are: You keep drawing when you don't have a match until you find one you can play, no matter how many you have to draw. If you go out of turn, you have to draw five. Sometimes we have random stupid things you have to say every time someone plays a certain card; depends on how dunk we are.

10 things a show needs to produce an awesome fandom

1. Good content that the fans can't get anywhere else
A show that doesn't have it's own clear identity isn't going to inspire that much caring or feedback from viewers to make them into fans. If it's a knockoff, it'll just get written off as "not as good as __", and people will be able to tell if it's happening just because something else was popular elsewhere. That's pandering and it's pointless. People have so many choices in TV now, there's no reason to have two shows that are the same.

2. The idea that the fans are smart enough to keep up and figure stuff out
You've got to trust your audience, not talk down to them, not tell them how to feel about things. One of the biggest things Sleepy Hollow did in it's finale this year (other than pointlessly killing a main character who happened to be a woman AND a poc) was spend a whole act trying to convince us that the stupid thing they'd done was okay. No. Let your fans feel what they feel. And give them stories that are worth keeping up on.

3. A certain "openness"--space for the fans and their ideas inside and around it
Openness in the story for people to fill in gaps themselves. Openness in the show for different points of view. Openness to fan theories and opinions (though not slaves to that). Openness to fanworks and meta. Accessibility of story points, moral stances, and character motivations. You want the fans to feel like they're part of it, not passive consumers with no right to think or say anything

4. Good social media presence
It's great when the actors and writers, creators and producers live-tweet a show with the fans. It's more great when the show's official accounts support fans, answer questions, provide sneak peeks and behind the scenes info, and basically are useful and not just places to sell things. Being on multiple social media accounts at once helps, too!

5. Reliability
Which leads to trust. Trust that the characters will be clearly defined and respected, not bent and deformed for whatever whim the writers or the network wants to follow. Trust that promises made in the story will be paid off, and it's not any sort of 'baiting or intentionally misleading. Trust that there will be good continuity, and not random storylines that are introduced and left dangling forever. Trust that the people making the show know what they're doing!

6. A feeling of collaboration, not competition
A competitive fandom is a fandom that will tear itself apart, so it's better to bring a sense of togetherness and inclusion, and that comes from both the show (or movie or whatever) itself, and from how the official powers handle the people watching.

A feeling of safety around fanworks would be cool, too--no big lawsuits, no weird behavior about them. Either leave them alone, or be respectful.

7. Some sort of positive feels--funniness, joy, playfulness, shippiness, etc--regardless of how the rest of the show goes
A show that is 100% serious all the time is a) exhausting to watch, and b) unrealistic. People crack jokes and snark at other people and say funny things for any number of not-funny reasons. A show that slogs through it's own story like it's a trial will not inspire fans to love it, nor will one that insists on denying it's own best parts as being awesome. Characters who never laugh are no fun. Characters who never fall in love--or at least have the opportunity to-- will be hard to make emotional connections to for a lot of people.

There has to be a break from the heaviness of reality or serious story or dire circumstances for everyone to get a break and get to know the characters.

8. Awareness of the genre-history it comes from, and respect for it
Shows don't happen in a vacuum. Everything had something else before it that either inspired it or gave it something to react to. You have to know your history to do it right, because the fans will definitely know it.

To go back and poke at S2 of Sleepy Hollow: It was insulting because the writers a) didn't seem to be taking any of the things that were the backbone of the show seriously, and b) were directly ripping off shows like Buffy without any understanding of the context or the appeal of the things they were blatantly stealing. Contrast that with Supernatural, which usually respects the stories it's building on and also makes them their own.

It's the difference between acting like your viewers are idiots who won't notice, and respecting that they will and giving them a new take on it.

9. Respect for the fans as actual people and not pawns or product
It's people who carry a show, not numbers on a graph. Treating people like promo-slaves is what bit The 100 in the butt when they killed off Lexa; don't do that. Interact with them one on one, not like a giant media conglomerate telling people what to think and do.

10. Network support
Advertising, so that people know you're there and when to find you. Good media events--especially at cons and related things where the people who make the show can interact directly with the people who watch it. Trust from the producers and network people that the creators and writers know what they're doing and can get it done, so they don't have to try to get it done while navigating interference and meddling. A willingness to let a show find it's feet before dropping the ax on it--XFiles, one of the biggest hits Fox ever had, wouldn't have lasted one season now, with how rough that first season is. A minimum of preemption and no schedule-rearranging without a really good reason and a lot of thought put into it--like NOT putting it up against much bigger shows. No snap decisions!


What do you think creates a good fandom?

Sami on Hunters 1.3 - In which we learn about Reagan

Hunters airs at 10pm on Syfy Monday nights!

I think it's still being damaged by being after the feels-stravaganza that is 12 Monkeys; it's very hard to jump right from whatever happened in the last few minutes of Monkeys into Hunters that is very much a slow-burn and much less...I don't want to say interesting, because it's very interesting, but it isn't as complex so far, and it doesn't hook me as strongly or as quickly. I continue to basically not care at all about whatever the case of the week is.

This week, it was blah blah blah terrorists funding themselves with drugs blah blah excuse to get into the jungle. There was a child soldier who could have been useful, that they shuffled off much the way they shuffled off Emme, who is also a teen girl who could be useful. There was a guy called Alejandro who was smart enough to figure out that they weren't looking for normal drug people, who then had to be killed because apparently murder is okay if you're in the ETU? Like, it's problematic whenever they try to talk about anything A-Plot on this show.

But there was also a huge focus on Reagan, and I liked that. She grew up thinking she was human until she almost killed someone as a child, then her dad showed her she's alien but apparently didn't tell her how to handle it--she wound up trying to cope by using all sorts of drugs and sex, but since she says in the non-flashbacks that alcohol doesn't work, I'm going to assume the drugs are minimal, too. She has to flee her house at sixteen with no understanding of what she is, and then gets "recruited" by the ETU in a way that sounds more like "do this or die in jail" and "we totally knew who you were all along and were looking for a chance to prey on your insecurities for our own ends". It didn't make me like him more, but did make me feel bad for her.

She's a total badass in modern times, and it's rough seeing her being such a mess in the past. I don't think bossman really cares that much about her, either, and that makes it worse.

Meanwhile, she and Flynn are on better terms. He's still trying to learn about her to understand his wife, who they're not chasing down today, and it feels like a set-up for a ship...which could be cool, if his wife wasn't his main driving point. Maybe after they find the wife and deal with her story in some way. Reagan and Flynn would be a lot less gross than her and McCarthy, who was blessedly absent this week. I think Flynn is basically a good guy, even if they seem to have forgotten that he has PTSD to deal with.

The Hunters had left the camp where they were brewing what looks like actual drugs and creepy alien-taken-from-humans drugs (that's the first the team has seen of that connection, I think), and killed most of the people that were just people, but there's still a monster in the woods. It's stalking them, and it's the reason they kill Alejandro--he freaks out when he figures out that monsters are real. 

But it also gives some of the very rare humor the show feels like it needs to allow--when the boss is all "abort" and Flynn fakes interference and goes "report? we'll finish the mission and then report!" and stops taking calls. I think he could be really fun, if they'd let him. And I think the show could really use the slight breaks from all the scowling and bickering and brooding. It would give the team members something in common, too, because they're not doing a very good job of team-building, and it's making them kind of the suckiest elite team ever.

I hope they start getting ahead of things soon, too, because they're always fumbling around in the dark and not getting much of anywhere. 

I missed Emme this week; she's still an underused resource. I missed the kitten*. I did not miss McCarthy being the grossest person ever, but I think he's probably behind the attack that drove Reagan out of her house at sixteen. It seemed like there's a division between the ones who want to blend in just to blend**, and those who want to blend in just to later come out and blow stuff up, and she grew up on the hiding side. Maybe McCarthy's weird interest in her is because she was pointedly hidden--she's biologically or culturally or historically important. That would be super cool, and it would be very important that she's  on the human side, if that's the case.

Hunters could be so cool. There's this whole pile of awesome, progressive ideas that I haven't seen on any other show. But they seem to be tangled up in a contest to be more gritty than they need to be, with a lot of shock-value choices that keep coming at me so that they aren't as shocking as they could be and ARE more annoying than they're intended to be. And in the meantime, their good ideas keep being underused.

On the other hand, this episode feels like things are coming together, a little, and that's a good sign. If they can get on the ball before the mid-point, they've got a chance! 

Here's what I'm seeing around all the messy gratuitousness:

• A kickass lady-lead who is alien but wants to be human: she's not happy with what she is and keeps trying to drown it, but that's where all her literal power is, and she's probably important to her own people in a way we don't know yet.***
• A male lead who is founded on manliness--he's an ex marine--but who is compromised by the trauma of that life so that he can't do it anymore, and then is thrust into a world where those skills are needed but he should have to find other ways to the same results.
• Music as a weapon.
• A girl who has perfect recall and doesn't have standard human reactions to things, who could really be an asset.
• A shifty boss who has a hardass boss of his own, neither of which seem to care all that much about the actual team they're running, and a crew of scientists who look to be poised to get stuck between team and leadership.
• Aliens who communicate with synaesthesia!
• A mole in the agency!

I don't care about the terrorism angle. But there's lots else to play with! Go play, Hunters!

 *They showed too much of the kitten in the first ep for it not to be convenient to the story later! Bring back the kitten!^
^Or have I been spoiled by 12 Monkeys, where Everything Matters, and I'm over-estimating this show?
**I feel like her parents should have raised her with some coping mechanisms--"you have sensory problems, things will seem too loud or too bright, here's how you deal with that". Save them the trouble of "oh no, my daughter almost killed a kid"...
***Is she the only female Hunter we know? Would we be able to tell if the others were male or female? Do they always pick the human gender that corresponds?

Sami on GeekCraft Expo RDU

This past weekend, me, our very own Paula P, and my brother David went to table at the local GeekCraft Expo! I've never done a show on this side of the table, and never been to one of the GeekCraft shows before, so I had no idea what to expect. I was SO NERVOUS setting up, but I'm so glad that Kim took a chance on me and let me join! It was awesome!

So often, in fact, that I didn't have time to take many pictures. These were sent to me by Paula! There were tables set up in several rows--not a big space, but a lot of variety inside it, everything from adorable tiny top hats, to chain maille, to awesome cupcakes. You can see the whole list of dealers here.

It was so exciting to be able to sell my stuff directly to people! So many people didn't know that home made nail polish was a thing, and it was so flattering and vindicating when people laughed at the names I'd given them. Everyone was so nice and so enthusiastic! I wish my helper had been able to come*, so that I could have wandered around and taken a look at more of what other people had to offer, but the sellers I talked to couldn't have been nicer or more friendly, and the customers--I had no idea that NC was so nerdy before I saw how many people came through the show!

The Expo was very well run, set up and taken down without a hitch as far as I could tell, and the people in charge did really well with social media promotions--lots of people came looking for us specifically because they'd seen us on the FB page and on Instagram! It was a long and exhausting day, but in the best way possible, and I'm so glad we did this!

*My niece, who had a play that weekend and couldn't make it.