Haiku number two!

Happy Haiku Day!

I'll be posting random nerdy haiku all day from behind the booth at GeekCraft Expo! Stay tuned!

Hunters 1.1 - In which we meet a bunch of weird people and get no answers

Hunters airs at 10pm on Mondays (and will be paired with 12 Monkeys starting next week!)

The latest entry in Syfy's We Don't Suck Anymore initiative feels like it's going to continue the trend of actually being good! I feel like I shouldn't be surprised anymore--they've proved with several shows now that they're serious about it--but it still feels new. Maybe because all the shows still are new? And I am still surprised.

First off: the Hunters are the possibly-but-not-definitely-aliens who manage to live among humans as terrorists and, apparently, DJs, not the people who are out to stop them in another poorly-lit government office.* The humans are the Exo-Terrorism Unit, ETU, out to stop them from whatever totally unclear nefarious plots they have going on.

In this episode, we meet Flynn Caroll, an FBI agent who will be our in--he's got pretty bad PTSD but hasn't been benched for it, so I guess he works through it, and if we're lucky, it'll make him better able to handle something having to do with the Hunters. He's married to Abby, who has hearing aids that seem to actually do the opposite of usual ones; when she gets kidnapped, the baddie, McCarthy**, takes them out and hits her with a sonic barrage that makes her ears bleed (and happens to be built around remastered OMD songs from the 80s?). Flynn and Abby also have guardianship of a dead friend's daughter Emme who has a "spectrum disorder", so I guess she's Autistic in some form? She's not handling her dad being dead and Flynn being sort of unintentionally awful to her very well, and he puts her in a boarding school, but she's about the only one who speaks her mind directly and to the point on the show, so hopefully she'll be back. And rounding out the family is a kitten that wandered in and so far hasn't been named, but also gets a lot of screentime to not be important.

So Abby gets kidnapped and held in a tiny cage with constant music making her catatonic, and as Flynn goes looking for her, he meets the ETU who are hunting these terrorists. They've just lost someone from what looks like their only strike team, and Flynn gets into that spot because he's the main character. The team is weird, too. Reagan flirts by beating people up and no one seems to trust her, and she can sort of do what the Hunters do. The other guy is on loan from Australia and is not very nice to anyone. Their boss seems to be allergic to humor and throws a lot of words at Flynn without a chance to process any of them. The guy who seems to be spokesman for the scientists is nerdy and the most relatable of the team; he won me over when he was explaining OMD to everyone. 

And the aliens are creepy and gross! They wear human skins, but human ways of killing won't stop them and barely slow them down--they have to get hit with a sonic blast right in the head. They communicate with creepy clicking noises and McCarthy has been embedding them into his remixes as a way to communicate with his scattered operatives. This is the first time the ETU has caught one of these transmissions, and it's a manifesto with things like "love will swing the hammer" and "you will cry and you will die" and no real details about what they're actually going to do.

As a pilot, it sets up a lot, moves people into place pretty well, and then doesn't answer any of the questions it asks, but it's classed as a thriller, so I'm assuming the point of the show is to chase those questions till the end. It's intriguing, though. Reagan is snarky and closed off, and has all those quirks that make her a big interesting question mark. Flynn is in way over his head and knows it, but needs to find his wife--and hasn't yet found out that there's something going on with her. The baddies are bizarre and creepy and up to something we've barely discovered yet.

The show as a whole is dark and atmospheric, and scored with a great soundtrack and background music spooky enough that even the kitten scenes and the romantic ones are tense. You're always wondering what's going to happen next--when the next problem is gonna drop. 

The cast is nicely diverse--not just in race and gender, but also in neurodiversity; if they handle that stuff well, it might wind up being important for that alone, regardless of what happens in the rest of the season. 

So much is introduced and so little is answered that I could have used a 2 hour premier, but also it seems as if it's going to be an ongoing story rather than an episodic one, so if you're watching this baby, don't miss any!

I'm definitely coming back. Did you guys see it? What did you think? Let's talk in the comments, or come over and tweet at me on Twitter!

*Seriously, that's one of the trends in weird-TV right now--lighbulbs are so last decade or something.

**Julian McMahon who always makes me want to punch him within thirteen seconds of being on screen. I'm actually happy he's a baddie on this show, because it makes my gut reaction to him easier to handle--you're supposed to want to punch bad guys! I don't even know what it is; he's been around my shows for decades, and I just always want to punch him.

All my problems with Sleepy Hollow's Danny have nothing to do with him

Warning: This is salty.

Danny Reynolds is a good guy, and he recently took the whole "there's monsters in the world and we fight them" speech really well, but I have some Issues with him in this show. None of them have to do with his character, and all of them have to do with how he's being used.

1. He's not Crane
I've made no secret of the fact that I adore Ichabod Crane and Abbie Mills as a team, as a couple, as a pair that cannot be divided. But that's because the show literally casts them in that light at every turn, but refuses to treat them that way.

It's not Danny's fault that he's not Crane, and if he'd been handled better, maybe he could have made up for not being Crane in a real way, but with Abbie and him moving toward couple-dom while Crane still looks at Abbie like the sun rises in her face, it makes her look oblivious at best and callous at worst. Does she not see that Crane cares about her more than just a normal friend while she's literally supporting his butt and he's making her lavish dinners? If they are actually committed to fully platonic Ichabbie, they're doing a piss-poor job of it, and meanwhile, Abbie is over here making out with her boss in a federal law enforcement job while Crane is at home, waiting for her. I don't like how it puts this layer of weirdness in how Abbie deals with the world, and how no one is pointing it out to her on the show.

2. All his development with Abbie happened off screen
Look, if a main character is going to have a relationship that is not with another main character, that other relationship needs extra attention. A relationship between two characters who both headline a show needs a lot of attention, but if you're gonna hook them up with someone else, it's going to need even more. You've got to show the steps. Show that he's worthy. Show that he's an actual interesting character with real traits and not just a list of starting points for them. Show why they like each other and how things progressed--not just come back from a season break with a time-jump and an ex we never knew at all, and assume that we'll just buy it. That's insulting. And it immediately places that poor new character that has nothing wrong with him in the position of acting on things that never happened so that it's all talk, no proof. And being very obviously a distraction from the relationship that HAS been developed for her--and that, in this case, TPTB have been super shifty and ship-bait-y about.

Look, if Ichabbie is never going to be a thing, have that talk, on screen. Have them kiss and feel nothing, or properly address the fact that literally everyone thinks they're together. Have them confirm for real that they're not in love--and for the love of all things holy, stop putting them in romantic situations that are played out romantically. How can we buy Danny as a love interest, not just a distraction or a second-best, if we've still got all this Ichabbie stuff happening and never being addressed, and everything that would have convinced us to like Danny more happened in a season that never existed? A season that was effectively a different show, if Abbie and he were in Quantico like normal people and not fighting monsters?

3. He's too little, too late
Because of all of that above. This is the third season, and there's no guarantee of a fourth. Through all of season 1, it was the Ichabod and Abbie show, then through all of season 2, Abbie was effectively dislodged from her own starring role and treated as if she didn't need connections or love or anything. It was alarming. She hardly had anything to do, unless it was a totally terrible stereotype of a thing to move the plot along, regardless of how her previously-established character wouldn't be treated like that without saying anything. And now she comes out of it, seeming miserable and hardly laughing or looking like she enjoys either of her jobs, and they're finally going to tell us NOW that she actually does deserve to be loved...but not by the man she's spent three years sharing her life with?*

4. He's the "getting back with your ex" trope embodied
Even worse than off-screen relationships is getting back into one for real with the person we-the-viewers don't know from Adam. If they'd had a previous on-screen relationship, that would be annoying enough, since exes are exes for good reasons, but introducing an ex just to get them back together when we never saw them together before? Nah. Lazy. You're shorthanding the relationship and stealing a lot of the power from it. The whole strength of any relationship on TV, of any variety, is how well that relationship can move the audience, and it feels like they just assume we'll be on board just because it's a relationship, rather than actually building one with emotional weight for us to actually feel. They're doing the same thing on Blindspot** right now, and it's just as annoying there.

Every time a show does that, it comes across as cheap. They're underestimating how much the show means to the fans and willfully tossing all that previous emotional weight out the window without even bothering to go through the steps to change the associations. Just handing us a new ship like it doesn't matter, like they're interchangeable, and like saying they have a past we never see (and they don't even really get enough into to make feel real) is as good as actually experiencing it. They did the same thing with Katrina in season 2--a lot of talk that never was proven, and it fell flat, but at least she got flashbacks and context.***

5. Who even is he?
The show is built on two wildly different people figuring out how to save the world together. It's literally about different strengths and skills defeating evil. Danny is a good guy and might be a good addition to the team, but he's also a lot like Abbie, and we already have Sophie being a lot like Abbie****, except he's barely sketched out. We don't need her being paired off with someone so much like her when it's pre-established that working with, living with, and being drawn to Crane made her better. Especially when he's like her in such broad strokes: they want to help people, they were top of the class in Quantico, they're both stubborn. Where's the actual character development he deserves?

It makes it seem like she's scrabbling to regain the past, but they're not really dealing with that (beyond a few lines in like one episode at the beginning of the season), and not committing herself to the future, no matter how much she says she is. It feels like she's trying to keep some sort of normalcy that she never actually had, because going to Quantico was always about not being who she is--not the delinquent that saw demons and lost her mom, not the Witness that fought the end of the world. It makes it look like she's rejecting Crane and Witnessdom again, or trying to have it all in that destructive way that means you aren't really fully doing any of it.

He's a symbol more than a character, and he's set up like a mirror image that never got to reflect anything. If they'd put more effort into building his backstory, giving him the screentime to have adventures and reactions of his own, maybe it would have been different. Right now, he's charming and good looking, but all we have is: ambitious, in the FBI, didn't exist before the time-jump.

Danny could have been a nice foil. He could have been someone new who is what she wants to be--or what she thinks she wants to be--and forced her to properly decide between being a full FBI agent and being a Witness. He could have made her stop trying to separate all the parts of her life (and there's still a little time for that, now that she's told him her Big Secret). He could have been using his own skills to actually find out about all this weird stuff that's going on, NOT just sitting back being a bad boss while she disappears and lies and is shifty as crap about it, and then stumbling upon the crazy with no forewarning. Think how having the FBI as more of an actual part of the story and not just that place Abbie goes to sometimes could have unified her scenes at work and at Witnessing.

Unfortunately, though, Danny has fallen into another of the many fumbles on this show, and he's doing his best with hardly any screentime and contradictory actions and lines. They made him someone she met while she was not being herself, away from the destiny that the whole show is about, and has been mostly avoiding and lying to. Now we're supposed to just believe that she's loved him all along. Shame. Poor Danny.

I'm getting too salty about him. Danny deserves better! And so does Abbie! Not this half-ass addressing the issues she had last season, a real devotion to the story!

*Not to mention that it's feeling racist? Like, I don't like getting into that, it's a loaded subject, but when there's multiracial leads, with a great built-up potential and great chemistry, and they force them apart to match up with same-race random others? It feels like putting people back in their place, and it's very uncomfortable.
**Twice! With the addition of the "clearly you're only sleeping with me because you can't have her" discussion that makes Weller look like a liar AND the "I used to know you and I still love you even though I have no idea who you are now" thing with Oscar and it's gross and it's the first thing I've hated on that show that I otherwise love.
***Even if they couldn't decide what her purpose was or what her story actually was.
****Tho so far, Sophie being the daughter of two archaeologists is more interesting and more definitive backstory than we have on Danny, and more useful to the story here...though there's literally never been enough backstory on any of the side characters on this show. Sophie came in with all these Corbin skills, and they never came back to the potential for Jenny to have just been one of many like her and what that could have done for her characters AND the world she works in.

Letter From the Editor - April 2016

Hello lovely geeks! How're our Fangirls doing this month? Personally, if you've seen the update I did yesterday, I'm doing pretty dang awesome for once! In the middle of the month, I'll be selling my nail polish at GeekCraft Expo here in Raleigh, and there's a little comic con lasting only about a day that my brother and I are going to try to get to; if I do, we'll have that discussion, too!

This month, we've got all sorts of new shows and returning short-series shows: Wynona Earp (which I reviewed here), Hunters, 12 Monkeys, Orphan Black, Outlander, Containment, The Night Manager, Game of Thrones, Fear the Walking Dead, The Good Witch, The Last Panthers (about jewel thieves!), and specials on Jane Austin and Roald Dahl (and there was one just a few days ago on the Brontes)... So much stuff to look forward to!

And it's now officially spring, when things get moving and everything wakes up, and TV shows start winding down for the summer, so we;ll probably be looking at some season-ender reviews, and trying to figure out what shows did it right and which did it wrong!

What geeky things are you guys up to now that the weather is slowly warming up? If you're a reader from the southern hemisphere, what're you doing now that it's cooling down?

Share in the comments, and we'll compare notes!

Wynonna Earp 1.1 - In which Wynonna winds up back in Purgatory

Wynonna Earp airs Friday nights on Syfy.

I literally had never heard of this show before last week, but then I saw that it was Syfy, and that Hank was recommending it, and since a) Syfy has really been making an effort to make shows that plug perfectly into my personal psyche, b) Hank usually recommends shows I wind up loving*, and c) I already missed Sleepy Hollow** and Second Chance***, I thought I'd give it a go.

Man, I'm glad I did.

Wynonna is a mess, but she's not irredeemable, and she's mean, but not because she's a mean person--because she was damaged by a sucky childhood where she thought she'd be the sister of the hero and wound up having to be the hero herself after the monsters killed the first born. And then she accidentally killed her dad while trying to save him. Like you do.

But this starts years later. She's trying to come home just long enough for her uncle's funeral and winds up getting involved in a murder case for a girl who was on the bus with her. In fact, she spends most of the episode trying to leave, but you can't keep running from your fate, and she has come into her Slayer powers and needs to deal with that.

Deputy Marshall Dolls wants her to work with him. Aunt Gus wants her to leave. Waverly, her sister, has been doing all the research and knowledge-gathering that she's been avoiding, and so has a whole Wall of Crazy**** and is way more enthusiastic about everything than Wynonna is. And all 77 people their ancestor Wyatt Earp killed with his enchanted gun are all coming back to the world--the curse the Earps have to deal with.

The first half of the episode is tense set up after a horror-movie intro where Wynonna knows how to take on a baddie and THEN comes into her power without really even noticing it yet. Then there's really good character stuff as she tries to find out what happened to her uncle (the monsters got him) and she runs into all the people she never wanted to see again, who have various reactions to her. And the second half is full adventure--She gets the gun, she has run ins with Marshall Dolls, the Revenants want Earp's gun, the Peacemaker, and to get it they kidnap her sister and attack her aunt. She is a lousy shot, which is hilarious, but she learns how to use the wild ricochets for good. The aunt lives AND she saves her sister from hanging! Hurrah!

That last part was great. If there was a male lead, Gus would probably be dead, and Waverly might have died dramatically in her arms; since she's not a dude and the creator and at least some of the writers are women, too, Gus lives and Wynonna manages to save Waverly with much snark and crazy risk taking! Better yet, Waverly seems to have not once questioned that her sister would save her, even when the stool is kicked out from under her and she's literally being hung while her sister handles a fistfight nearby. It's wonderful!

This first episode moves at a good clip, but doesn't feel slow when people are talking, probably because of how Wynonna is sometimes literally fighting her way away from all this stuff that's being introduced, and always does it with admirable snark and attitude. It's a snarky show--but the snark covers scared, damaged people who don't want to be hurt anymore, and that comes through really well. Wynonna and Dolls have good chemistry, but more importantly, Wynonna and Waverly could very well be the lady-Hunters show that Sleepy Hollow looked in the first season like it could have been and never was! It's got sort of an early-seasons Supernatural feel, but with one location and girls, with a little Buffy and the barest hint that they took what worked for Sleepy Hollow and folded that into the genre influences. And it's a little little like Jessica Jones in the leather-jacket, tank-top, hard-drinker who doesn't take shit from anyone.

It's so much fun.

And the "this season on" looks really good, too, with more and better, so if it can manage not to change the tone too much in the transition from pilot to season, it'll be so great. Even better, there's a dark heart lurking somewhere next to that heart of gold, and there's the potential for it to get really creepy--and also the potential to stay light-heavy like this episode: serious, but not oppressive. It'll depend how they take it. And both ways would work so well with this pilot! I can't wait to see how they'll take it.

Did you guys watch? What did you think! Tell us here in the comments, or go over to Twitter and let's talk there!

*Last year he got me to watch Killjoys and Dark Matter and I never looked back.
**I'm mad at Sleepy Hollow for dropping so many of the good story-balls they've thrown anyway, and this does sisters better.
***I really like that show and it makes me sad that ANOTHER Fox show I like is probably not going to exist long enough for people to kiss.
****A Wall of Crazy is a sure sign of quality weird plots to come!

What Sami's been up to! - March 2016

This has been a busy month for me! Here's what I've been up to!

I started reviewing Stitchers for TVGeek Army! I used to review for them back when the site was new, and I really loved it, so I jumped at the chance to go back when Eric asked me to! I'll be picking up 12 Monkeys and probably also Orphan Black for them next month, too, so they'll be over there instead of here, but I think I'm going to do more freeform discussions about what's going on in them on here, so come find me!

I've also picked up The Flash and soon, Containment for ScreenCrimes, which is still building it's site but sounds like it'll be fun, too. It's early days.

And next month! If you're in the RDU area, come by the Durham Armory on April 17th, 10am to 6pm and come buy my nail polish, and some stuff made from my nail polish! I'm going to be making custom polish colors ON THE SPOT! How cool is that?? I'll be reporting on it, too, so look for that post afterward, even if you can't make it in person.

What've you guys been up to?

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.

Professional Fangirl Roundtable #1 - Earliest fandoms

Sami:

I think I'm gonna just straight up steal that one off Tumblr for the first question: What was your first fandom? The first thing you remember just geeking out over?

Kiddle: 

Hmmm - I'm older, and got busy with life so some of my geekiness was on hold for a bit because of life. LATELY, 2013 marked my reentry into TV show geekdom. Sleepy Hollow launched my Twitter activity! I had an account forever, but had only sporadically used it. Sleepy Hollow ignited a passion for both Tumblr and Twitter. I pored, in particular, over Tom Mison - the beginning of my "10 Toms" list (which has expanded beyond 10 Toms now. LOL). I really have to thank Sleepy Hollow, because, in addition to giving me a lot of pleasure, I credit it for launching me into being active with Black Sails, which lead me to Hank Otero (@Hanko9) and HE led me to my Dominion intense relationship. That's garnered me so many new acquaintances and friendships, plus encouraged me to branch out into forms of fan art. I believe it might have been Sami who made me reinvestigate Storify (33 or so Storifies later - THANKS SAMI....LOL).  Going way back in time, I think one of my odder obsessions was over Kolchak: The Night Stalker. HAHAHA. I loved that show. Sighhhhh.

Lothwen: 

Harry Potter! My friend made me read them. She said I could go on sailing vacation with her and her folks if I promised to read Harry Potter. We've been fangirling over it ever since :)

Danyi: 

First fandom was Harry Potter. When I was seven my aunt got me the first three books and got me hooked. 

Sami: 

Holy crap, when you were seven. I was buying my own books and coffee at a bookstore with money from my first job the first time I saw Harry Potter! But those books are amazing. I read all five of the first ones in a week when I worked at the library, and then went to release parties for the last two!

The very first thing I remember talking about and being obsessed with was Star Trek: the Original Series (then, the only series!). I grew up watching it with my dad and I loved it so hard. And Remington Steele. Like, that show is still something I could watch every night and not get sick of it, and I'm waiting for someone to realize it would make an awesome reboot before cops-and-con shows go out of fashion. I'm pretty sure the very first fanfic I ever wrote was sappy diary entries on one or both of these shows before I knew that that was a thing people let others see.

And, of course, being an 80s kid, ALL THE CARTOONS, but specifically Cities of Gold, Belle and Sebastian, Jace and the Wheeled Warriors, Thundercats, She-Ra and He-Man, and Ninja Turtles. 

The first thing I ever bought novelizations for was Press Gang. Has anyone seen that?

Lauren: 

I wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter as a kid, so I was a teenager, and all but the last book was out before I read them. I haven't seen Press Gang, but Star Trek resonates with me. I used to watch the Original Series with my dad, as well as the The Next Generation. I was about the happiest kid alive when Star Trek: Voyager came out. 

I loved Star Trek, and it definitely paved the way for another couple of obsessions: Stargate SG1 and Firefly.

Stargate is the first and only universe I ever wrote fan fiction in.

My real first obsession though was Lord of the Rings. I had just turned seven when my dad was given the trilogy and when I asked about the books, he said I'd like them, but they would be too hard for me to read. I set out to prove him wrong. It took me a year, but I read all three books, and had gotten through them twenty-one times before I turned twenty-one. Everything in my life centered around Middle Earth for a while. I was ecstatic when the movies came out. I can still see the influence of Tolkien's writing on my own.

Of course there were other things I loved as a kid, other things I really got into, but none of them have stuck with me the way these have. 

A few honorable mentions: Doctor Who (the fourth doctor is forever my favorite), X-Files, The Chronicle of Prydain (book series), and the universe of Ender's Game.

Kiddle: 

I'm substantially older than the rest of you. But I was given Lord of the Rings when I was 9 and I LOVED THEM. That was a great series. I think I might have read the Hobbit after the trilogy. But I can't remember...

Good on you for plowing through those at that age!

I was thirteen when I read The Hobbit, so I got them backwards like you did :)

Danyi: 

Lol it's ok I'm use to be the youngest most of the time. I read Harry Potter and then along came anime. Oh! And my aunt had me watching Doctor Who at 5 but I barely remember that so I don't count it lol. 

Sami: 

Oh, man, Doctor Who. I watched the Fourth Doctor forever, but I never really thought about it much until we lived in the UK--at the time of the Seventh--in the town Sylvester McCoy came from. I actually watched the last ep of the original run live, and totally missed the significance entirely. But the Eighth, in that movie that totally failed in the US? That's when I got Doctor Who, and when I found out that it had been relaunched after watching a Tenth Doctor ep on TV (the second half of a two-parter!), I went and found all of series 1 and 2 and watched them all in one day when I was sick, and then watched them all again when I showed them to my room mate a week later. Then we had Doctor Whos-days for a while, where we'd come home from work and watch a Classic Who serial each Tuesday. Four laid a foundation in my brain, but that tower of fandom wasn't built until my 20s, so I didn't count it.

You know what books I adore from when I was a kid? Wise Child and The Snow Spider and Narnia. Those're the ones I read over and over again. And when I was just out of High School, I read The Dark Is Rising and wished I'd found it when I was a kid!

PS: Kiddle and Danyi--age doesn't mean anything in fandom! We all love the same!

PPS: I have never seen Kolchak, but I remember when Chris Carter namedropped it when he was doing X-Files the first time, there was talk of reviving it. I think those original eps on Chiller now?

Kiddle: 

Four is my favorite doc. Hubby and I watched those on PBS very regularly! I still love Tom Baker. He's quite funny.

Nic: 

Hi ladies, 

Sorry I'm a bit behind. Really first participating in what we consider fandom now, would be Dominion. However, if we're just talking about being completely smitten with something, then I have a few early on - and don't laugh! 

(ok you can totally laugh). 

As a pre-teen I was obsessed with NKOTB. I had Jordan's T-shirt and the band's sheets. I wrote what we would call fanfiction now - at the time it was just stories that me and my BFF would write to each other. (complete with us being stranded on an island with the 5 guys! LOL). 

I was also obsessed with Madeline L'engle series (A Wrinkle in Time, Wind in the Door etc), LM Montgomery's books (Anne of Green Gables etc), Wheel of Time series, The Dark Is Rising series, and a few others. I was obsessed with fairy tales - but the original ones with dark endings. 

TV wise - early on was 21 Jump Street and Miami Vice. They had angsty brooding dudes and "darker" themes. I loved Stargate SG1, La Femme Nikita (film and tv series), Farscape, X-Files and the ultimate fangirling was for all things Buffy (and then later Angel). BSG was also another big one.

Movie wise - The Crow really impacted me (I was in high school - I still remember seeing it with these guy friends I had). It was dark and tortured and Brandon Lee was one of the few (if only) mixed race actors on the scene at the time that was a lead. I also love Speed for similar reasons (I mean, come on, Keanu Reeves!)  ;)

I became obsessed with the Matrix (specifically the first movie - saw it 8 times in the theater - in NYC where there were no matinee show prices! it got pricey).

Ok so that's probably more than you wanted to know. I know there's a pattern somewhere in there... LOL

Sami: 

The Crow! Oh man, that hit right in the middle of my Goth Phase when I was singlehandedly trying to stop the tide of messy Marylin Manson gothiness. 

What did you guys first fangirl over?

Letter from the editor - March 2016

Hello lovely geeks!

February, even though it was a day longer than usual, still felt incredibly short and fast, didn't it? We hardly did anything we'd intended to do--how about you? But March is officially the end of the first quarter since we made the promise to make Professional Fangirl a real site*, and it's time to make sure we're still on track. That puts me in mind of making sure everything is on track--and since this is a site called Professional Fangirl, it makes me think about plot lines and story arcs and whether our favorite stories are going how we think they should--and how much what we think matters to the people who make the show.

So that's the open question for the readers and the bloggers this month: How on-track are your shows? Which shows went off track spectacularly and which got it just right? What old examples do you use as a yardstick to measure whether a show is on track or not?

I'll post our answers (and the answers to last month's question that I never posted) later, and in the meantime, feel free to talk about that in the comments or in the community (linked in the sidebar)!

Happening this month:

• Blindspot and Gotham are back, finally!
• Colony will be wrapping up, and we'll see whether there's good enough payoff for all the trauma they've been living through!
• Agent Carter wraps up it's second season tonight, and Agents of Shield comes back on the 8th
• PBS airs a documentary about A Year In Space
• Damien, about the kid from the devil-movie grown up, launches on the 7'th
• Daredevil comes back on the 18th and brings new and beloved people with him!
• Stitchers comes back on the 22nd! Yay!
• And on the 31st, Ovation is airing a movie called The Brilliant Bronte Sisters that will either be awesome or totally boring
• Elementary movies to Sunday nights part way through the month, which could be okay, or could be a bad sign, depending--I always get nervous when they start moving shows around
• Rush Hour launches, while we're talking about odd crime shows

And this month's movies:

• 11th: 10 Cloverfield Lane
• 18th: Allegiant, Little Prince, Pee-Wee's Big Holiday, Midnight Special, A Space Program (and The Bronze, notable because of Seb Stan, if not scifi)
• 25th: Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, Identicals (poor them, going up against BvS!)

And we've got SO MUCH MORE lined up as the months unfold! What're you guys looking forward to this year? Is this going to be the geekiest year on record?



NOTES:
*I always think "a real site" in Pinocchio's voice. Also, I'm totally drinking tea out of a moscow mule mug in that pic, and burning my lips like a doof.