Monster Monday :: on makers and progeny (or sires and children, or whichever combination you prefer)

Because I’ve discussed the individual sexual habits and proclivities of individual vampires before, many of whom were makers-sires/progeny-children, and I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned the different kinds of maker-sire/progeny-childe relationships, but I wanted to properly list them out and analyze them.

Shockingly, this list is not going to be canon-sorted.  Since it’s about different kinds of things, I’m sorting it that way.  So.

Sexual relations from the start

• These are the makers (okay, from here out I’m just going with makers and progeny, since quantitatively there are going to be more on this list who are thusly called in canon) who are banging their progeny, period.  They sire (but see here I’ll use that term as a verb, because I like it) a vampire because they like them and want to be with them intimately.
• Sometimes these maker-progeny relationships end; this is often due to choices made by the progeny.  They want to live a different kind of life, so they ask to be released and basically dumped, or they do something to cause the maker to feel they have no choice but to set such a scenario into motion.
• Both pairs of consistently coupled makers and progeny who constitute Buffy and Angel‘s Whirlwind, Darla/Angelus and Drusilla/Spike, could be made to fall under this category.  (Angelus/Drusilla is a more complicated issue.)  Darla (Julie Benz) seduces Angelus (David Boreanaz) and turns him, they go on their merry and have all the sex the whole time (though not exclusively, of course), their relationship is then terminated by Angelus and his acquisition of a soul.  Drusilla (Juliet Landau) is enchanted by Spike, who is then William (James Marsters), then she charms him and turns him, they go on their merry and have all the sex the whole time (though not exclusively, of course).  Their relationship is terminated technically by Dru, but because she observes a change in Spike’s behavior.
• The best example I can pinpoint from True Blood is Lorena/Bill.  (While certain other couples, i.e. Russell/Talbot, technically fall into this category, many of the details are ones that are not given much airtime, so I’m just going to mention it and move on.)  Many of the details of Lorena’s (Mariana Klaveno) past are similarly fuzzy (though according to the True Blood wiki, there are several things in common with the Drusilla situation) but the details of her relationship with Bill (Stephen Moyer) are fairly straightforward.  He shows up at her cabin on his way home from the war, she appreciated his “strong moral character” (quoting from the wiki there, because I think it’s funny), she turns him, they go on their merry and have all the sex the whole time.  In 1935, then, Bill asked to be released, being fed up with Lorena’s being, well, a prototypical murdering seducing vampire.
• Oh, and I guess there’s plenty of this in Twilight, because sex is okay as long as you’re in a committed relationship and maker-progeny situations seem to sometimes lead to committed relationships in Twilight.  Or committed relationships lead to maker-progeny situations.

The fuzzy gray area that involves sexual relations, but

• There are three types of these.
• Angelus/Drusilla, wherein it is a fuzzy gray area because, well, there are sexual relations, there are a lot of sexual relations, but they are technically in relationships with their own other halves.  The Whirlwind is this big polyamorous mess of vampire sexin’, but it’s mostly that they like to share.  Also, Angelus/Drusilla is never a proper relationship, because the proper relationships that come from the sex in these other cases involve(d) some degree of officialness.  Angelus was with Darla, Drusilla was with Spike, and there was never really any time when the four of them were together and that wasn’t true.  And here the father and daughter thing is very intentionally creepy.
• Eric/Pam, wherein it is a fuzzy gray area because yes, they partake of the sexual relations when Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) turns Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten).  They also partake of the sexual relations before she is turned.  But while they eventually stop having these relations, they don’t ever actually have a “break up” like the above couples.  They stop banging, but they stay together, and their relationship gradually shifts into one that the True Blood wiki says is “comparable to that of a father and a daughter,” though never entirely.  They stop banging, but they stay really, really close.
• Pam/Tara, wherein it is a fuzzy gray area because the circumstances of their turning involve no sex whatsoever, but their attraction grows naturally.  Pam turns Tara (Rutina Wesley), but Tara makes the first direct move sexually.  There is an aspect of mother and daughter to their relationship, though it’s really only as much as you would see with a little girl “mothering” a doll, dressing her up and scolding her for purported misbehaviors.  Mostly they are just two women with a definite power dynamic that eventually enter into a relationship.

Pretty much familial

• I feel weird saying that the Master (Mark Metcalf) was properly fatherly toward Darla, but there’s really no other place to put them, because I’m pretty sure they never banged?  “Darla,” a nickname given her by him, means “dear one,” but that could just as likely be a dearness born of some sort of platonic familial affection.  She was his protégé, and that was pretty much that, I think?
• Also, Bill and Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll).  This is the most overtly daddy-daughter relationship that really is between a maker and progeny, and honestly, the only times I’ve ever felt fond toward Bill was when he was playing good dad.  I’m positive I’ve mentioned that before.  I imagine that Bill’s reasons for not sexually relating to Jessica were several: for one, he remembered how unhappy he was in a romantic relationship with his maker.  For another, he was in a relationship with Sookie (Anna Paquin) at the time.  For another, Jessica was a teenage kid, after all, and Bill used to have scruples and whatnot.  But while he was a pretty awkward dad at first, and he obviously turned into a huge jerk in regards to the whole Lilith mess, there was a period in the middle where he was just an affectionate father, and she was happy to call him her dad, since in that in-between he was way less of a douche than her human father.
• I’m pretty sure this is mostly true of Godric/Eric and Godric/Nora?  In their conversations about Godric (Allan Hyde), Eric and Nora (Lucy Griffiths) tend to refer to him as “father,” and they do seem to (have) compete(d) for his affections like siblings do.  I don’t know if we’ll ever know how much maker-progeny sexin’ was going on in that situation (personally, I suspect there was some, but that it eventually faded out over time a la Eric/Pam, and while Eric/Pam’s eventual form was something almost father-daughter but also decidedly not, the vibe of Godric’s relationship to his progeny was much more strictly familial at the end).
• Oh, and I guess there’s some of this with Twilight and Carlisle the wonder vampire doctor dad.

Surrogates

• Angelus was somewhat of an extra maker for Spike; this is mentioned sometimes.
• Eric and Pam both stood as substitute makers for Jessica for that little while (and I understand why it wasn’t part of the show, but I kind of wish we’d have seen those shenanigans at least a little, just because I love the ridiculous cool older cousin/enthusiastic little cousin vibe that Pam and Jess have).
• Salome (Valentina Cervi) was basically an extra maker for Nora.  Because Godric may have taught her how to vampire, but Salome taught her how to do many other things, I’m sure.
• Oh, and this is true of Twilight and Carlisle the wonder vampire doctor dad too.

–your fangirl heroine.

Spectacular Summaries Sunday :: top 10 gifts 2012 gave me

It’s not showing any signs of stopping yet.  And there will be much linking.

10. The Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy
No, really.  Hear me out on this one.  I will admit, this is sort of my wild card in-joke gift of the year, but for some reason, man.  That strange animated swirling glowing spectral star system is something my people and I absolutely cannot stop making jokes about.  (We realized that True Blood‘s Iraqi smoke monster is another of the Ghost Galaxy’s cousins, too.)  It wasn’t like it was creepy, but it was just so random that we can’t stop talking about it.

9. A Minor Bird by Sucré
Due to the way the days of this year panned out, I’m still putting my Top 10 albums of the year up tomorrow, but three of them go into this category, none of which should be surprising.  (Not that any of this list should be an overall surprise, but hey.)  Anyway, though.  Stacy has always been my favorite DuPree sister (I mean, I love them all very much, but Stacy plays keyboards, and that endeared her to me from the get-go) and her solo project, or solo-ish project at least, is just a legitimately good album in and of itself.  It’s become one of my favorite I Am Getting Ready To Go Somewhere Fancy albums (it’s got that certain je ne sais quoi about it) and also one of my favorite I Am Doing Creative Things Alone albums, and certain of the songs I just love to turn up at full blast and listen to as I take in the world around me.

8. Brave
As I just said on Friday.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who could say “but I don’t think I can actually explain how much this movie means to me,” and that actually makes me very happy.  This is one of the few movies I’ve actually gotten into heated almost-arguments about; “but I heard it was really feminist,” I once heard someone say, sounding sniffy about the premise.  “Yes, so?” was my immediate retort, and I proceeded to summarily dismiss just about every argument I had ever read a critic making against the movie (there are plenty of dude role models, why can’t a little boy have a girl role model because little girls are expected to have boy role models, Merida is not a lesbian just because she doesn’t want to get married and likes archery BUT EVEN IF SHE WAS why is that a big deal but I’m pretty sure her sexual orientation is the opposite of the point, etcetera).  I mention to you guys every time I go off on these giant rants, which might make you think I do it a lot, but not so.  There are plenty of rants I’ve wanted to rant that I’ve refrained from, but Brave is one of those rants I will rant forever.

7. Mad Men season 5
As I alluded to on Tuesday, I’m still not sure what to make of the situation with my Joanie (Christina Hendricks).  Because Mad Men has so much going on, I’ve noticed they have a habit of spending an episode dealing intensely with one character’s emotions, then just alluding to it for the next few episodes, and the situation with Joan was close enough to the season’s end that they didn’t circle back around to another Joan Feelings Episode.  We did, however, get Meaningful Looks between her and Don (Jon Hamm) and her being a Super Total Badass both at the meeting and in their new office space, so that’s something.  I was happy for Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) deciding to do what felt right for her and go elsewhere, but I really do miss her around Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  I do.  I, as mentioned, mourn Lane (Jared Harris); I am intensely curious about many of the other characters and the paths they’re taking, particularly Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) and Megan (Jessica Paré).  This was largely a gift just because of how long we had to wait for it, I admit, but it’s also one of those cases where my ambivalence about many of the situations they explored is actually a compliment.  I’m intrigued, I’m just torn.

6. Game of Thrones season 2
I never actually did a season 2 wrap-up post about Game of Thrones, largely because of the fact that the schedule I watched it on would have made it too late.  So I’m just going to link to my Game of Thrones tag, because gods know there’s plenty of meta scattered through the thousands of posts in there (and also because everything else gets a link, so consistency demands it).  Season 2 differs from A Clash of Kings more than season 1 differed from A Game of Thrones, and some of those differences were strange, yes.  (Having recently finished A Storm of Swords, finally, I’m looking forward to how they deal with the obvious changes Talisa [Oona Chaplin] is going to cause in the next seasons.)  But some of the changes, I actually… don’t entirely mind?  I don’t know exactly why Ros (Esmé Bianco), but a lot of the functions she serves are ones that other characters directly served and they’re just condensing it into one beautiful redhead, so that’s okay I suppose, and I’m fond of her for silly personal reasons.  For example.  And though I’ve gone off about this on my tumblr just a tiny bit, I guess this is the best time to really address the matter of Dany (Emilia Clarke) and her dragon drama (well, beyond the Doreah [Roxanne McKee] side of it, which I’ve already analyzed to pieces) here: anyone who says that Dany spent the entire season “just running around screaming about her dragons” is wrong and silly.  You know how long Dany actually spent “just running around screaming about her dragons”?  The equivalent of about one episode.  It was really “WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?” (a reasonable question) then “OH you have my dragons” then she wasn’t in an episode then “OKAY I’M GOING TO GET MY DRAGONS NOW.”  I’m copypasting from a tumblr meme rant I did now, because this is also important: “Oh, and I actually really liked the changes to the scene in the House of the Undying, mostly because in the book, it came off sort of SUDDEN MAGICKS WHAT IS GOING ON OH NO HERE COME JORAH AND BLOODRIDERS TO HELP ME MAKE IT STOP and in the show, it was more HERE IS A LOT OF TEMPTATION, OKAY, BUT I KNOW WHAT I NEED TO DO EVEN IF IT HURTS, AND GUESS WHAT?  HERE I AM COMMANDING MY DRAGONS AND SAVING MYSELF.”  Also, it’s not like everyone else doesn’t “run around screaming about” one or two things, either.  So.

5. Halcyon by Ellie Goulding
As I alluded to last Monday and will discuss more tomorrow, this album is my jam.  I like that it’s a little darker than Lights (though don’t get me wrong, I love Lights too) and I feel a little more personally connected to a lot of the songs.  Also, I love that Ellie Goulding actually gets played on the “normal” radio sometimes (not enough to make my people grumble, like they do about Adele [which sucks, because she's still really talented, but], but enough) because it means that I know a song on the radio.  (“Only You” came on at a bar the other night; the friends I was with had been singing along to all of the Katy Perry, One Direction, and other insanity that played while I sat on top of the pool table and wrinkled my nose in confusion, but once there was Ellie, I could sit there whisper-singing to myself and smiling because finally I knew what was going on.)  This album is good for driving, for introspection; a lot of the tracks are good for exercising; it’s super morbid in places, even in the chipper-sounding songs (because really, “Anything Can Happen” sounds super-happy but isn’t, and I love that).  Also, she’s British.  This is a failing of mine forever.

4. The Avengers
Were there things this movie could have done even better?  Of course.  Perfection doesn’t exist, and once I heard that Joss had wanted to write in Janet Van Dyne to be played by Morena Baccarin, a hollow space of longing opened up in my heart (both because there should always be more lady superheroes and because there should always be more Morena Baccarin).  But did this movie do a lot of things really, really right?  Oh, yes.  The dynamics between the characters, the platonicness of every relationship (and I was thinking about this; it’s not rare to have a bunch of platonic dude relationships, but if there’s a woman, especially if there’s only one main woman, she’s almost always tied to one of the guys, but that is not the case here, thank goodness), the characterizations, the dialogue (of all of the characters, I actually think Nick Fury [Samuel L. Jackson] has the Whedoniest lines), the Whedonverse in-jokes (actors, references, anything in between) – it’s just overall warm fuzzies.

3. Synthetica by Metric
While Halcyon and A Minor Bird were sort of slow-burn favorites for me (there were tracks I loved intensely from the get-go, but the whole of the albums took a few listens to fall as deeply in love with), Synthetica was sort of instant.  I’ve been into Metric since junior year of high school, when one of the other editors on my school newspaper, who was graduating that year, gave me a whole stack of music to continue her Good Music During Newspaper Layout Parties legacy; I don’t think I’ve ever said thank you to her, because we haven’t actually seen each other… probably since then, actually, but I would very much want to.  Metric is a beautiful group, and Synthetica, while not perfect because that isn’t real, is almost a perfect album.

2. The Cabin in the Woods
For so many reasons.  I’ve refrained from writing too too much Cabin meta, but this is mostly because I’ve read some really intriguing pieces of it by other authors.  (I tend to talk more about things I hear/see fewer people talking about, I think.)  I really do love this movie, though.  I love it for all of its meta, I love it for its simultaneous genre critique and genre overhaul; I haven’t seen a lot of the allegedly big famous horror franchises, but I have been known to enjoy a terrible straight-to-video horror film or ten, so I’m comfortably aware of the conventions, enough to enjoy seeing them ripped to shreds.  I love it for its social critique: as some of the meta I’ve seen has said, the pigeonholing of characters is uniquely American.  The athlete/scholar/fool/whore/virgin thing is a different version of the ever-referenced Breakfast Club: characters have to be reduced to one thing by others in order to make them understandable to said others.  Clearly, there’s much more to them, but that would be too complicated.  Men are defined by what they do (sports, academia, humor) but women are defined by who they do (or don’t do).  What this movie does, though, is both acknowledge that this is the way that we (and in this case, “we” ends up being a global evil corporation based in ancient rituals and monsters, which is oddly apt) often view things and acknowledge that viewing things in such a way can only lead to danger.  Reducing people to one dimension and then sacrificing them so that we may continue to go on our merry only leads to badness.

1. True Blood season 5
I’m linking here to my talking about the season premiere, then my talking about the season finale, then just my True Blood tag, given the exceptional amounts of discussion that goes on within it.  (Aside from day topic tags, the only tags I have that are more populated than the True Blood tag are the Buffy tag and the Dollhouse tag.  I’m sure this is mostly season 5′s fault.)  I was going back and forth about whether I should put Cabin or this at number one on this list, but I realized that honestly, it had to be this.  It couldn’t not be.  I have several friends who watch True Blood, and the reactions to season 5 have been varied; “I liked it,” one said, “I just didn’t understand all of it.”  And that’s totally valid.  It’s very different from the books by this point, but I’m, as I have mentioned 1000 times, more than comfortable with that.  There are bunches of reasons that this is at number one, almost all of which I talk about way too often: Nora Gainesborough (Lucy Griffiths), obviously, by herself and also plus Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and plus Salome (Valentina Cervi), the joy of Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) and Tara (Rutina Wesley) like I mentioned on Tuesday.  Pam and Tara as individual characters, Eric and Salome as individual characters, Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) as an individual character, Luna (Janina Gavankar) and Sam (Sam Trammell) by themselves and together, the utter adorable that is Emma (Chloe Noelle), the awesome that was dearly departed Molly (Tina Majorino), the twist of fate that is evil Bill (Stephen Moyer), the fact that Sookie (Anna Paquin) got to develop outside of the context of any romantic entanglements at all, the joy that is assertive Alcide (Joe Manganiello), the fun evil of Russell (Denis O’Hare) and his cuteness with Steve (Michael McMillan), the sassiness and wonder that is Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis).  The fact that the book is fun, but the show is just getting dark and going into serious things like hate crimes and religious fanaticism, but cloaking it in this seemingly absurd world of supernatural whatever.  The fact that here is this show that people routinely brush off, as I’ve said, as being SEXY VAMPIRE SEX OHMAHGAH, but it is actually dealing with these more serious topics.  The fact that yes, sure, horrible things happen to female characters sometimes, but horrible things also happen to male characters; power on this show is divided fairly evenly between female characters and male characters; Lilith may be evil, but it’s fascinating that vampire God is a woman; when characters try to coddle women, they get called out on it (like with Sam and Luna); femininity is not regarded as an inherent weakness, but not every character “does” their femaleness in the same way: this is actually, at least in my read, a pretty lady-positive show.  The fact that this show is open to and seems to encourage non-vanilla/heterosexual sexualities and, provided that they are consensual and not rooted in evil, treats them just the same; the fact that this show is intensely bisexuality-positive.  The fact that sure, there’s SEXY VAMPIRE SEX OHMAHGAH, it’s about vampires and shifters and werewolves and fairies and goodness knows what else, but the whole of it is actually very well-written and the characters are realistic.  (Maybe sometimes a little too: having just been down South, I can [re-]vouch for the fact that folks like the townspeople extras in True Blood do definitely exist, particularly though not solely in that geographical region.)  Clearly, I could go on about this for ages.

–your fangirl heroine.

Monster Monday :: on vampire sexuality

A year ago, I talked about vampire procreation, but that isn’t all there is to vampire sexuality.  Far from.  So as usual, canon-sorted.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel:

• To a soulless vampire, sex is just part of the fun.  It goes hand-in-hand with blood and killing: they eat, they kill, they bang.  Sometimes more of one of those variables than another, but that’s the basic equation.
• Sex, at least for the Whirlwind, both did and did not acknowledge the family structure that Drusilla (Juliet Landau) set up.  The “official” pairs amongst those four were Darla/Angelus, Dru/Spike, which held to at least the basic seniority involved, but then again, the official pairs were guidelines and not strict rules: “Intimate liaisons also occurred between Angelus and Drusilla, Angelus and Spike, and Darla and Drusilla,” says the Buffy wiki.
• And let’s just look at that for a second.  Both possible slash couples, though not seen liaising, are technically canon.  Angelus/Angel (David Boreanaz) and Spike (James Marsters) can be read as quite hetero-leaning; that they happened to interact sexually was probably more an exception than a rule.  Darla (Julie Benz) and Drusilla are probably hetero-leaning; they aren’t seen interacting sexually with other women, really, though there’s more basis in canon for the nature of their having proper intimacy and not just doing something.  This is to say: while sexuality as a whole is always fluid, vampire sexuality is more openly so, perhaps.  It was network TV, so much of this is implied and not seen, but hey.
• Now, Angel and the “true happiness” issue.  The curse that causes Angel’s soul to disappear being triggered by orgasm in the company of the woman he loved is an interesting metaphor.  It’s not just sex that does it (Angel does have sex later without the soul-losing repercussions) but sex with that person, well.  That this is what does it, and that it’s not fully revealed until after the initial incident, is pretty easy to read as commentary on at least the social connotations of acting on one’s desires.
• Spike has a fair amount of sex.  He’s routinely with Dru when we meet him, he’s eventually with vampire Harmony (Mercedes McNab), he gets with Buffy for a relationship that’s mostly sex without the strings of affection and trust, he probably gets with others intermittently if he can.  At least pre-soul, Spike is one of those who seems to need to have someone to define himself in relation to: he both belongs to Dru and cares for her, he has Harmony, he has Buffy and belongs to her simultaneously.  Angel’s identity is largely defined by his perceived inability to be sexual, and Spike’s identity is largely defined by the ways in which he is sexual.
• Oh, and let’s mention vampire Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Xander (Nicholas Brendon) also; because this is canonical alternate universing, it’s not worth mentioning in many of these lists, but these guys are a perfect example of: flirtation, killing, all in one.

True Blood:

• SEXY VAMPIRE SEX OHMAHGAH.  That’s people who don’t watch True Blood talking about True Blood.
• But see… not only?  Yes, there is sex.  Many characters, vampire and not, regularly partake of the sex, because it is HBO where you can do that, but, uhm.  I’ve mentioned before that I have never really found it gratuitous, and that still stands.  And it’s not like there isn’t sex in the source material.  Maybe not as much, or as specifically strange, but it is there.  Because hey, you know what?  Sometimes people in life have sex.
• Buffy seems to have a sire/childe relationship imperative: rather, there are plenty of vampires who don’t end up sleeping with those they’re linked to by blood, but the main instances we see of Darla/Angelus and Dru/Spike are blood ties and intimate ties both.  True Blood is… fuzzier on this subject.  Which I talk about all the time, but I’m stating it here for the record too.  I’m just addressing this vampire by vampire.
• Bill (Stephen Moyer).  His sexcapades with Sookie (Anna Paquin) comprise much of the first seasons, which means that SEXY VAMPIRE SEX OHMAHGAH is already a misnomer: Bill is a vampire, Sookie is not, it’s not like this is just a show about vampires banging.  Actually, a reasonable amount of the sex we see is not vampire/vampire at all.  Bill did have a sexual relationship with Lorena (Mariana Klaveno) his maker, which ended when she released him; it is reprised in season three (and while I didn’t even find the head-turned-backward sex gratuitous, it was definitely nosewrinkle-inducing) and it’s definitely not of the good.  Then there’s more vampire/vampire sex when Bill hooks up with Salome (Valentina Cervi) in season five.
• Eric (Alexander Skarsgard).  He gets a fair amount of fangbanger action before he eventually hooks up with Sookie (this in contrast with Bill, who decidedly does not; this could be reflective of the fact that Bill starts as a super-mainstreamer, or reflective of the fact that Bill is kind of a prude).  He is unashamed of this, and it’s definitely not vanilla, nope.  When Eric gets with Sookie, it’s much more “normal” – sure, it’s outside the first time, then it’s in sex Narnia, but it’s still something like missionary.  And then Nora (Lucy Griffiths).  They have two different sex scenes, and this is more vampire/vampire sex, but unlike Lorena/Bill or Bill/Salome, it’s… presumably from a place of if not romantic love in the traditional sense then at least some kind of love.  Eric and Godric’s relationship… well, it’s never fully described, but there’s much speculation.  Also of note is the conversation between Eric and Talbot (Theodore Zouboulidis here credited as Theo Alexander), where they’re about to get to it and Eric comments that it’s been a long time since he’s done this, then corrects upon Talbot’s prompting that he doesn’t mean sex with a man, he means sex with a vampire.  We don’t see Eric getting with men, but he mentions that he has, and it’s unlikely that it’s a complete lie.  So that’s something.
• Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten).  She’s gotten a fair amount of fangbanger play over time too, usually on the desk in the office; she’s lady-leaning, definitely, though presumably not entirely (“Let bygones be bygones, bi girls be bi girls” and whatnot).  She met Eric in the context of sex, and they were intimate, though they haven’t been in some time.  Pam is completely sex-positive, really.  And while she presumably is entering into a sexual relationship with her progeny Tara (Rutina Wesley), it wasn’t a given fact, it evolved over a bit of time.  The attraction grew like attractions do into what I will say again is the most beautiful phrase in the English language, cellar door be damned: interracial lesbian vampire couple.
• Sophie-Anne (Evan Rachel Wood): vampire/fangbanger time all the way, and “I haven’t enjoyed sex with men since the Eisenhower administration.”  And though she has favorites, she seems iffy on the concept of monogamy.
• Russell (Denis O’Hare), first with Talbot and then with Steve (Michael McMillan).  Definitely gay, which is not made an issue; he forces Sophie-Anne into that marriage of convenience, but there’s no pretense about it.  He seems to be more for vampire/vampire sex, yep.
• Franklin (James Frain) was a d-bag and a rapist and he’s despicable.  But I suspect that would have been true of his personality whether or not he was a vampire.
• Nora.  Reiteration, she has a fair amount of sex with Eric, and it’s vampire/vampire but not of the bad so that’s something.  Also, please allow me to elaborate on why I fully believe that the Nora/Salome kiss came from a place with background: the way I read her, intimacy in one way translates to intimacy in another for Nora.  She and Salome were crazy-close, so naturally they were going to have the sex, even if it was only implied (sigh).  Also, Nora feeds on humans, but she doesn’t strike me as necessarily the fangbanger type too often.  She’s more of a strictly vampire/vampire sex kind of girl.
• Salome.  Based in a story of seductive manipulation, which she then debunked, but either it was a lie in the first place, or she eventually learned that art.  Because wow, wow, all the sexual manipulation from this woman: she was in a relationship with Roman (Christopher Meloni) and presumably had been for a while, they shared a bedroom, she shed a tear (of debatable legitimacy) when he was killed, but do I think for a second that that wasn’t a strategic choice of hers?  Nooope.  Bill was a strategic choice, too, and I still can’t decide how much it turned real.  She was taught to define herself by who she liaises with, at least publicly, but do I think she saw herself as anyone’s strictly speaking?  Nope.  And here’s another reason why Salome/Nora: she looked at Nora like she didn’t look at any of the others, at least if you’re watching with lady-tinted glasses.
• Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) is never seen having sex with another vampire, actually.  She’s with Hoyt (Jim Parrack), then with Jason (Ryan Kwanten); she feeds on fangbangers of both sexes, but she’s still fairly heterosexual.  She’s actually, I would say, the most heterosexual of all of the vampires on this show.  Even Bill gets innuendo thrown at him and participates in sexy dreams of Sam’s (Sam Trammell).
• Okay so I wrote a lot about these guys and sexuality but that’s because they live in a canon where they’re allowed to have more sexuality to write about.

Twilight:

• Presumably, Rosalie (Nikki Reed) and Emmett (Kellan Lutz) have a healthy sex life, Alice (Ashley Greene) and Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) have a healthy sex life, Esme (Elizabeth Reaser) and Carlisle (Peter Facinelli) have a healthy sex life.  Token “breaking a house” jokes go here.
• But do we know anything about these healthy sex lives other than those jokes?  No, because this is the kind of story where only major characters’ intimacies are really delved into, so we only hear about Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) doing it.
• I’m still shuddertwitching about the birth scene, though.  I haven’t seen Breaking Dawn yet, but I remember reading it and being horrified.  For one thing, half-vampire half-human baby?  How again?  At least there’s magic involved in the vampire/vampire conception on Angel that I’m still not up to yet.  For another thing, this is the actual grossest, and I have the strongest stomach of most everyone I know as long as there aren’t closeups on needles in spines or eyeballs.  But it’s gross psychologically, too, which I’m sure has been said many a time already on the internet.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: maybe I wear too much pink [a sartorial analysis of Pamela Swynford de Beaufort]

(Leave me alone, I just love using her full-full name.  It’s so fancy.  [Sidenote within a sidenote: once when, uhm, doing some recreational internet reading on the Plantagenet era, because I am awesome, I noticed that there was a woman named Katherine Swynford who was the mistress and later wife of the first Duke of Lancaster, John Gaunt.  Their illegitimate children bore the surname Beaufort, after a property of theirs.  There's a True Blood fansite that gets into this also, but I didn't find it until now; basically, the conclusion is that we still don't know if Pam is distantly descended from this line or if she just adopted the name to sound, well, fancy.  I sort of like the latter, personally, because goodness knows Pam costumes herself in other ways, tying into the rest of this post.])

There should be no surprise to anyone that my second hit of clothesmeta is all about my darling Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten).  More than once have I made actual audible whimper noises in regards to Pam’s clothes, and even disregarding that, Pam is one of those characters whose clothes say a lot about her.  It also ties into the ambiguity of her fancy-ass surname because while she’s basically always presenting, it’s tricky to know which presentation is her and which is what she needs someone to see.  And this is beautiful as well, because they very well all could be her, just different parts of her.  True Blood is the kind of show where it’s easy to assume characters are switching sides/alignments/loyalties/what have you: Eric, Bill, Tara, Jessica, Nora, Jason, etcetera.  But while Pam’s motivations may shift to some extent, and while she may be presenting, she’s also quite easy to read on one hand.  Other characters may be perplexed, but we as an audience have learned that she’s fairly straightforward in a lot of ways.  And a lot of her presenting is tied up in her costuming.

1×04, “Escape From Dragon House.”  This is our first introduction to Pam (or Eric [Alexander Skarsgard], or Fangtasia and the actual vampire nightlife for that matter) and there is no mistaking that meeting Pam means meeting Vampire Pam, capitalization necessary.  It’s no surprise that Vampire Pam is not uniquely, but often, sighted in Fangtasia during business hours: to an extent, she’s a crowd pleaser.  She’s giving the patrons of their bar exactly what they came for, which is the idea of the pale, made-up, often-leather-clad, sexy, vaguely kink-possible vampires they’ve been fed their whole lives but in the safe context of mainstreaming.  This has it all: reddish lipstick, alluding-to-Gothic jewelry, everything leather, fingerless gloves, a corseted dress.  (My Pam is the queen of corseting.)  She is confident to the point of arrogance and highly aware of what she’s doing.  Another interesting thing to note is that this outfit and several of Pam’s others mirror things Jessica dons in season five when patronizing Fangtasia.  Her little black dress wasn’t a corset and her fingerless gloves were fishnet, but it was a similar effect: essentially, this is a vampire uniform.

It’s not until 1×08, “The Fourth Man in the Fire,” that we see off-duty Pam, Pink Pam as it were (there’s no coincidence that you absolutely never see her in a pink corset, I’m sure of it).  Pink Pam is much more casual.  Her jewelry and makeup are much more subtle, though still present: she is the kind of woman who, as we’ll see, does not ever go completely natural.  It would be easy to think that Pink Pam is the real her and Vampire Pam is a costume, but this is still very possibly a sort of costume.  It’s just the costume of off-duty respectability.  For goodness’ sake, that’s a cable-knit sweater and khakis.  It’s tame on purpose, because not all business, even vampire business, calls for Vampire Pam.  (Actually, a lot of Vampire Pam’s business is for humans.)

As we see here, evidenced in shots from 3×01, “Bad Blood,” and 3×02, “Beautifully Broken.”  Sookie (Anna Paquin) appears at Fangtasia that night in search of a disappeared Bill (Stephen Moyer), and there’s no reason that she won’t run into Vampire Pam in all of her glory.  This is actually one of the more ridiculous Vampire Pam outfits, and I mean that lovingly; it’s one of the first instances of the recurring “cut holes in all the things” theme to her clothes, so I’m not complaining.  Also, this hairstyle is similar to ones later seen in the Prostitute Pam flashbacks, though not in either of the pictures used below.  But later, we catch Pam off the clock: she’s still at Fangtasia, because that’s where she almost always is, but she’s not presenting to the crowd.  She’s slightly more comfortable, presumably, in another pink sweater (gold jewelry and buttons, of course).  Pink Pam is sort of a grown-up Regina George, but more mean because she’s disinterested than mean for pure cruelty’s sake.  (Most of the time.)  Pink Pam is very aware of what she presents, hence the post title, but it’s interesting that she says this to Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll), a fellow vampire: she presents Pink Pam, the colorful and presumably cooperative Pam, largely to other vampires.  They think she’s nice because she needs them to.

Including this mostly to point out two things.  One, at least not-corseted Pam wears a leopard-print bra with pink straps, which is oddly endearing.  I am not an animal-print person in the slightest, but Pam pulls it off.  (Much like I strangely don’t scream every time I see the matching hot pink Uggs that go with the velour track suit there.)  Also, this bra is almost girlish.  Those pink straps have a bow at the bottom of them, for goodness’ sake.  It’s cute.  Two, many of Pam’s jammies and hanging-out outfits are interchangeably used, and many of them are velour track suits.  But I guess not taking one’s jewelry or makeup off to sleep must be a vampire thing, because that second picture is right when she’s woken up, to which the only accurate response is damn.  Vampire Pam also appears when she needs to assert power in some way, and given the conflict with Nan Flanagan in the scenes preceding and following this, it’s only reasonable that Pink Pam and Vampire Pam are overlapping slightly here.

One of my all-time favorite tumblr posts was one derived from an interview, about Pam’s Barbie collection.  And really, I think it explains so much about Pam as a character.  Anyway, why I bring it up now and not in regards to one of the listed outfits is because the above brown leather/camoflauge combination, circa 3×11, “Fresh Blood,” and 3×12, “Evil is Going On,” is emotionally akin to the listed Safari Barbie outfit from season one.  This serves the same basic purpose; she’s had several outfits over time in this basic color scheme, and they’re almost always in similar situations.  Dealing with other people’s crap with a sarcastic smile, taking care of business but not in such a way that she necessarily needs to slip into the also listed Kill Something Barbie vibe.

This contradiction that isn’t, circa 4×01, “She’s Not There,” is interesting.  This is one of the only instances of Pink Pam being theoretically presented to the non-supernatural public.  The Barbie post calls this outfit Ladies Who Lunch Barbie, and I’d also attribute descriptions like First Lady or grown-up Elle Woods to it.  But the reason is simple: they’re doing vampire PR, of course Nan would want the allegedly nonthreatening “nice girl” Pam to be talking.  After all, that’s what Pink Pam is there for: lulling people into a sense of security.  This is the fanciest instance of Pink Pam, too, because while Pam may own multiple Barbie-colored track suits, like hell is she going to be seen on television in anything that’s less than perfect.  Later in that episode, though, she’s back to leather corset Vampire Pam.

4×04, “I’m Alive and On Fire,” ne of the only times we see Vampire Pam outside of Fangtasia, and that’s simple: she’s here to threaten Marnie (Fiona Shaw).  She’s showing she means business, and if business isn’t achieved, she has no qualms about dolng some killing.  Also, this is my (now second-)favorite Pam outfit of all time.  Then by the next episode, 4×05, “Me and the Devil,” we have Cursed Pam, who is almost wholly covered (a rarity for Pam) and, you know, decomposing, which is gross, but I read some actual official clothesmeta about this once, and I think it may have actually been Kristin Bauer van Straten herself who described all of this as Pam “mourning her beauty.”

Nooow it’s time for Kill Something Barbie in a couple of variations, circa 4×08, “Spellbound,” and 4×11, “Soul of Fire.”  The first picture here brings up a point I think I’ve mentioned before: every self-respecting vampire owns a leather jacket.  (One of these days, I’m going to make this a tumblr photoset, I swear, because it is so true.)  I include a sliver of Jessica wearing her leather jacket in the second photo to discuss something interesting about that whole series of scenes: yes, Eric, Pam, Jess, and Bill all go to be badass in their all-black, but unless I’m misremembering Bill’s outfit, Jess is the only one who actually wears a leather jacket in that scene.  Eric and Pam’s jackets certainly aren’t leather, at least.  And why is this?  Well, they’re all being badasses, but Eric and Bill both offer a different kind of bravery in their prospective self-sacrifice for Sookie’s sake, which is less of an active bravery and anyway doesn’t ultimately result in either of them getting their goal (Sookie’s affections).  Pam is a badass, but she also messes the hell up and has a serious falling out with Eric.  Jess is the only one who comes out of this scene relatively unharmed, even though that isn’t to last.

I had to talk about the 5×01, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and 5×02, “Authority Always Wins” sweatsuit.  Of course I did.  Television canon Pam has her track suits, but they are immaculate.  They are stylish.  They did not come from Wal-Mart and they do not have kittens, flowers, and butterflies on them.  (I’m not sure if they rushed out to the 24-hour Wal-Mart to pick this up or if Sookie just had it laying around for… such emergencies?… but later in the season, Sookie is seen wearing a kitten sweatshirt, so.)  Presumably, Pam didn’t do much to her hair between turning Tara (Rutina Wesley), still in the above badass-but-not-leather outfit, and going to ground with her, but I’d just like to point out how Pam is apparently incapable of simple ponytails.  Even those have to be a little fancy.

Finally time for Prostitute Pam, circa 5×02, “Authority Always Wins,” and 5×03, “Whatever I Am, You Made Me.”  There really isn’t too terribly much analysis here, other than an observation that Pam has been costuming since she was a human and corseting just as long, but I have to throw them in.  (I think the latter dress, when viewed from all angles, was the one that got the loudest gasp out of me upon first sight.)  Prostitute Pam has more than a few things in common with Joanie (Kim Dickens) of Deadwood, actually.  Uhm.

Finally, proper Vampire (Barbie) Pam is back, circa 5×05, “Let’s Boot and Rally” and 5×08, “Somebody That I Used to Know.”  In the interim, she’s had a couple of corsets, some vinyl, but this red dress is the first major reclaiming of leather.  This isn’t just Vampire Pam, this is Vampire Pam In Charge, with the bloodred lipstick and the hair full of secrets.  The second picture there represents what is actually my favorite Pam outfit as of seeing it, and I include Tara somewhat in the picture because the way that new mommy Pam not only dresses herself like a Barbie but dresses her new little girl in similar ways makes me so happy.  They’ve both got the leather and/or vinyl, the Asian-inspired dresses with giant cleavage windows, the corsets or waist cinchy belts over top.  It’s not so matchy-matchy as to be saccharine, but it’s Pam’s way of trying to make a place for Tara in her life.

Finally, we have the hybridized return of Kill Something Barbie, 5×10, “Gone Gone Gone” and 5×12, “Save Yourself.”  The before-seen-on-my-blog white leather jacket (which you can also buy through ModCloth, I learned) is interesting because, as said, hybridizing.  It’s sort of Kill Something Barbie with an emphasis on Barbie: she’s being made to play nice by the douchey new sheriff, she’s got white leather, pink lipstick, but she also has enough silver (colored, at least) studs to poke the hell out of someone.  By the time she’s in vampire jail for taking the blame for Tara’s so-called crime, she’s still got some leather there with the corset and buckles, because she is being a badass in several ways, but it’s also one of those corsets and tops with cleavage windows things.  She’s got pants like she knew she’d be kicking some ass, but she’s also dolled up.  Because on True Blood, ladies either rescue themselves or get rescued by other ladies after trying to rescue that lady in the first place, and she needs to have nice curly romance novel hair for her beautiful kiss of epic.

–your fangirl heroine.

Sarcastic Saturday :: 6 cousins of the Space Mountain: Ghost Galaxy

Let me explain: fall is the best of times to go to Disneyland, because they fancy up some of the rides to be “Halloween themed.”  The Haunted Mansion goes Nightmare Before Christmas, as I said before, and this year, they did Space Mountain up with the “Ghost Galaxy.”  What is the Ghost Galaxy? you might ask yourself.  We certainly did (I was holding out morbid hope that there might be something akin to Reavers).  No, the Ghost Galaxy is (a more impressive IRL) this:

Awkward image thanks to Disneyland News Today.  The Ghost Galaxy is a glowing yellow specter that creeps at your around the corners of the ride, more projections amongst the fake stars.  Anyway, in the approximate month since we returned from Disneyland, it’s become a game amongst my people to find the Ghost Galaxy’s “cousins,” or other things that remotely resemble it.  So here are some of those things.

6. Good old-fashioned creepy ghosts.
A la Ghostbusters.  This posited by one of my people; having never seen Ghostbusters, I couldn’t say for positives, but it’s on the list.

5. Melisandre’s shadow baby.

Not that this picture shows it very well, but this guy is kind of the Ghost Galaxy’s cousin made of shadows.  Birthed from Melisandre (Carice van Houten) creepily.

4. What the internet calls “Billith.”

I mean, obviously the Ghost Galaxy is glowing and yellow, and does not have fangs, whereas reborn-of-the-blood Bill (Stephen Moyer) is bloody and red, and has fangs.  But Billith and the Ghost Galaxy make the same angry growly face, and they both have freaky blue eyes, and their textures are similar I guess.

3. The Mummy.

I think I saw this movie once.  Maybe.  This was posited by another of my people, and I’ll go with it.

2. Flayed Warren Mears.

I’m using a comics picture here because it gets to my point better and also is somehow less disgusting than actual fake-flayed person.  If flayed Warren Mears was, again, made of glowing yellow instead of bloody red, that’s the Ghost Galaxy.  Glowing viscera.

1. One of the Cabin in the Woods glass box monsters.

Presumably, this monster is some sort of shadow ghost thing.  But aside from being not glowing and yellow, it looked exactly like the Ghost Galaxy.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: somebody had to do something to make Father proud [an analysis of Nora Gainesborough]

(That is also somewhat of an argument in defense of her, more than usual.)

I can get to wondering if I’m watching shows wrong on account of who I get attached to, as I before have said.  Also, I am aware that (not even including fanmixing and styling) I have already written approximately 3,000 words of Nora (Lucy Griffiths) meta.   But the whole reason I wrote my very first characters-I’m-attached-to essay, the Bennett one, was because I saw that someone had called her a c-bomb on a reblogged gif on tumblr and I was just so furious about it that I had to write an essay.  The whole reason I wrote the Tara essay was that a person I knew IRL had proclaimed their dislike for her.  The whole reason I wrote the Kaylee essay was someone mislabeling her in a tumblr graphic.  Weird things make me cranky, and I react with lots of words when I’m cranky.

(Also, I figure I will eventually pull these proper essays out for all of my headerwomen, so that doesn’t hurt.)

Really, the internet is both a blessing and a curse regarding my women.  Sure, I find the few people who also have the feelings and make pretty gifs and enjoy things, but I also find people who do not in the extreme.  And I just cannot get into blind criticisms.  Maybe if there were essays of someone’s reasoning behind disliking fictional characters, I’d shrug it off; that’s rarely the case.  (I did see a pretty well-reasoned essay about the Dany/Doreah situation, and I could try to accept their viewpoint because they presented evidence.  Granted, it made me sad, but that is because, uhm, nothing makes me sadder than that situation, at least of late.)  On one hand, it’s silly.  These are fictional people, what does it matter?  On the other hand, whether or not you think about it, someone who is willing to dismiss a character full-stop simply because is probably someone who’s willing at least to some extent to make such rash judgments about real life situations, too.  And you should never do that.  Just going along with things without thinking is definitely bad.

And actually, this brings me to my complete defense of my Nora.  Because while I had a lot of emotional reactions in real time, and I recounted them, it’s better to take a few months to contemplate proper arguments in defense of things.  (Which is why I waited until September to edit and post that Dany/Doreah meta, for example.  Get some – probably not enough – emotional distance.)  Discussing why it is bad to go along with things is actually really relevant to the Nora situation, as per “going along with things,” to some extent, is the crux of Nora’s entire season five arc.  And maybe more.  (Insert requisite yes I am so glad she theoretically has more seasons to arc comment here.)

But, as I mentioned before, in Nora’s case, it wasn’t “just going along with things,” it was “going along with things because.”  It was being presented with evidence, considering said evidence, then going along with what it led to.  Then being presented with more evidence, considering said evidence, and using it to counteract the bad that the original evidence led to no matter how difficult this would be.  Yes, okay, she was seduced by bad bad vampire religion, because Salome (Valentina Cervi) presented her with evidence.  (And the presenting of said evidence, uhm.  Well, I have my theories about how that went down.  But more on those in a minute.)  Then she was presented with more evidence in the form of a hallucination of her maker Godric (Allan Hyde) and that made her realize, nope okay gotta fix this now.  And she re-joined up with Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and set about doing that.  Because in effect, “making Father proud” is her way of saying “doing the responsible and/or right thing.”

It’s occasionally ridiculous to derive lessons in morality from fictional television shows about fictional vampires, but hey.  I think that learning lessons about using one’s own mental capabilities to reconsider evidence one has been given about things and act accordingly, even when it means admitting one is wrong, is an incredibly powerful, mature, and good thing to do.

This brings me to the first point I’ve seen online, an attack on her character in general, one that was basically equivalent to “she was evil and crazy.”  Which… no.  For one, how many times to I (and other people online) have to explain that evil and crazy and other things that are bad in regards to real life people do not make bad characters.  A character does not have to be good to be a good character.  And sometimes evil and crazy can be quite compelling.  But really, it’s what I just said above: yes, Nora made some bad choices over the course of the season and prior to the plot’s proper beginning, but they were choices she made and oh yeah, she unmade them.  Plenty of characters make bad choices over the course of their canon and people just go with it; to use another example about the internet, Loki for chrissakes.  Way eviler, way crazier, way unrepentier.  But oh, poor baby is just misunderstood.  I wonder if a lot of the antipathy I’ve seen toward Nora’s choices has/had to do with the fact that she was never presented as a big bad (at least in my read, I dunno).  She played like three different sides, so her moral choices were therefore more subjective to judgment or something, whereas big bads are allowed to be big and bad and nobody hates on them for it despite their lack of repentance and their evilness.  For goodness’ sake, even evil crazy Nora was on a team of multiple evil crazy vampires.  She wasn’t doing it alone.  Also, as I keep saying, she repented hardcore.  A character does not have to be good to be a good character, but by the same token, it seems unfair to hate on characters for being bad when it’s only done selectively.

Now onto my next point, one that I hadn’t even considered until I Googled “Eric and Nora” to find things to draw a while back.  For some reason, the idea of vampire brother and sister sent some people into a tailspin.  “Is it incest???” multiple links on the first page of searches asked.  I wasn’t even looking for it, and there it was.  And it just made me want to shake people.  For one, this is the internet, where all sorts of actual incest is shipped without shame.  (I don’t go there myself, but I’ve seen it: the brothers on Supernatural, any combination of Weasleys [“oh, but I thought ‘twincest’ meant twin princesses,” a classmate once said in my presence circa junior high, after a discussion of Harry Potter fanfiction], the canon Lannisters.  The list could go on.)  For another, as evidenced by my repeated mentions of adoration for the vampire family construct, they aren’t really siblings though.  Nobody bats an eyelash when it’s makers and children having relations; granted, maker/children relationships can be sexual or not or some weird in-between in True Blood canon (Pam/Tara and Bill/Lorena, Bill and Jessica, Eric and Pam) and it’s not quite as much of a given as it is in, say, Buffy canon, but still.  I have never seen anyone online being like “whoa, whoa, Pam is Tara’s vampire mom, they can’t have all the sex.”  Because that isn’t how vampire families work.  It honestly surprised me that people were asking about that, because I just took it for granted that it wasn’t weird.

And speaking of who Nora is having sex with, let’s talk about Salome a little more.  “The kiss with Salome was just titillation,” I’ve seen people say.  And again, I didn’t even think about that.  There’s a lot of sex and romance on True Blood, but I’ve never actually found it particularly gratuitous.  It usually serves the purpose of some plot or another, and in my (starry-eyed) read of it, the Nora/Salome kiss did that wholly.  It was a little bit of a triumph, honestly, because remember last week when I lamented the lack of actual canon bisexuals in things, well, that was one kiss, but it confirmed for me something that I had suspected all along.  Sure, Salome was sexing Bill (Stephen Moyer) for a while in season, and had been sexing Roman (Christopher Meloni) until he met the true death, but I fully believed that Nora and Salome either were or had from the interrogation scenes in the first episodes of the season.  The way that Salome talked about her relationship with Nora – sure, it could have just been “hey, we’re close lady friends,” but come on.  I definitely shipped it, even if it was a bad idea that contributed to Nora’s above-discussed evil and crazy; Salome was not a good influence okay, Salome was never with the repenting, even as she died.  But I just cannot believe that they didn’t have a thing, and sure maybe there’s a part of me that’s all do want bisexual lady vampires and does not give a damn, but that kiss of theirs confirmed things for me.  It was an “I knew it” for me and a farewell for my Nora; it started with a forehead kiss, not unlike Buffy/Faith forehead kisses actually, because Salome was just being affectionate or what have you, but then it had to be a proper kiss (like Buffy/Faith forehead kisses really should have been) because there’s this split second where you can read in Nora’s eyes something like “no, no, this can’t just be a forehead kiss because I am not a little girl, which you know but also you don’t, this is goodbye and I can’t say that.  I love you, but no, this cannot happen.”  It wasn’t a relationship of titillation, it was a relationship that pertained directly to my Nora’s arc even if it was largely implicit.

Nora, as I have mentioned over and over, checks a lot of my character boxes.  The blue eyes/dark hair/cute nose thing, for physicality; the British thing; the vampire thing, to an extent; the overachiever thing; the for-a-while crazy thing; the bisexual thing; the techie goddess thing; the obviously pretty brilliant in general thing.  But even just beyond the box checking, I love her maybe even more than I could have suspected I would when I fell for the British vampire wearing black leather cutout gloves while she banged against the wall of a storage trailer.  Not every part of her season five journey was equally morally good, but I love every part equally, for how it contributed to her character.  And you know what?  I think she succeeded in her titularly mentioned goal; sure, the line comes from her and Eric bantering about the past, but the basis of her revelation is using Godric as an example of why not to do what she had been doing.  And while she and Eric don’t go meet the sun like Godric did in self-loathing that’s discussed many times over in the True Blood and Philosophy book, I think they do both ultimately do things that redeem themselves as vampires somewhat and would have made Godric proud, and sure, it’s good that Eric did the right thing the whole time, in his way, but I think that Nora consciously overrode some undetermined amount of time’s conditioning basically by herself to do the right thing would have impressed him a lot.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 6 of the times that family ain’t always blood

As I mentioned last week and as I mention always and forever, I absolutely just love created families.  These can take a whole variety of forms.  They’re based in organizations, in necessity, in friendship, in trust, in, uhm, vampirism, in care for others, in whatever.  And they are beautiful.  I heard in work orientation that the “my friends are my family” thing is sort of unique to the younger generations, and I suppose I understand how that’s true (it’s certainly true in my case, but I think that comes as much from generational differences as from my latching onto a few people with everything I have) but it has fascinated and will always fascinate me.

Honorable mentions to the Angel Investigations crew, who I’ll discuss a teensy bit more in a minute, and the cast of Community, neither of whom I’m discussing in detail because I’m still working through those two particular shows, but augh I love them already.  I’m just waiting till I’m done to discuss.  Another honorable mention, actually, to Dany (Emilia Clarke) and her dragons and her khalasar, which is a kind of family in its way (and, y’know, “blood of my blood” and stuff) but since it’s more conceptual/re: dragons than re: specific characters (I mean Jorah [Iain Glen], yeah, and her maids, though that’s a whole other meta, but) I’m not going into it much.

6. Sofia has four or five mommies and a daddy or two (Deadwood)
This one is complicated because strictly speaking, Alma (Molly Parker) basically adopts Sofia (Bree Seanna Wall), and Alma and Ellsworth (Jim Beaver) do get married.  But it’s my favorite adoptive mommy&daddy situation ever, basically; it’s different than if Alma was actively seeking a child to adopt, which is cool too, but this is more a case of stumbling into it and deciding that yes, she liked the little impromptu family.  And Ellsworth was a great fake dad.  I also bring this up because this is a relatively literal “it takes a village to raise a child” situation – I guess it’s more “Sofia has a mommy and three or four aunt figures” than the above, I just like how the above sounds.  Considering that Sofia is influenced by Trixie (Paula Malcomson) and Jane (Robin Weigert), to a lesser extent Martha (Anna Gunn) and occasionally even Joanie (Kim Dickens), as well as sometimes having Sol (John Hawkes) and Seth (Timothy Olyphant) in her life (and even Bill [Keith Carradine] a teensy bit back in the day), well.  Everyone is contributing to the life of this one adorable little girl, and I think it’s really sweet.

5. The Sons of Anarchy (Sons of Anarchy)
Wow, I don’t have nearly as much meta about these guys as I do about, y’know, everyone else, but they’re worth mentioning.  They’re totally a family, and for a long time Clay (Ron Perlman) and Gemma (Katey Sagal) were the daddy and mommy, easy; they’re married, yes, and Jax (Charlie Hunnam) is their RL kid, and the whole mess with Maureen (Paula Malcomson) and Trinny (Zoe Boyle) and Abel and Tara (Maggie Siff) and my point is there are a lot of blood relations, yes, but the whole extended club is family in their way.  Sometimes a family that doesn’t get on that well, but family nonetheless.

4. I heard it called “the family Godric” somewhere online and I don’t remember where, but I’m going with it (True Blood)
(Well, technically vampire families are by blood, just not in “we share blood because I literally contributed to the creation of your DNA” way.  But they count, because it’s a family that’s chosen and created.)  The family Godric is all of the vampires who are descended from the bloodline created by now-deceased Godric (Allan Hyde), with his children Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and Nora (Lucy Griffiths), Eric’s child Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten), and Pam’s child Tara (Rutina Wesley).  And now I’m all curious about whether Nora’s ever been a maker.  But I’m shutting up about it now.  Because even vampire families aren’t always by blood, I also sort of count Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) in the family Godric – well, Bill (Stephen Moyer) was her maker, but Eric and Pam did foster her when she was a newborn, and she totally does act like Pam’s bratty little sister sometimes.  (Bill can maybe be the uncle in the family, the one that nobody really likes that much but they’ve all had to deal with him.)  And now that the family Godric is a proper thing, ridiculous family times with the whole crowd now that they all know each other is one of three things I want from season six.  I basically just want them acting like they’re all in high school: Pam and Tara, the snarky ones who make out with each other and then threaten you with physical violence just ‘cause and insult everyone, Nora the socially maladjusted genius child (since going from the Authority to not just that is probably sort of like going from private school to public school or something) just being dry and British all over, Eric the golden boy, the noble bad boy type, and for good measure Jessica naïve and also not naïve “good girl” who isn’t really that “good,” just chipper.  This is their family dynamic, and yep, it works for me and I like it.

3. The Whirlwind (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel)
(Also technically a bloodline, but.)  Darla (Julie Benz), who sired Angelus (David Boreanaz), who sired Drusilla (Juliet Landau), who sired Spike (James Marsters).  In the above vampire family,  the lines between parent and child are a little blurry, but in the Whirlwind, even taking the romantic relationships out of the equation, it’s very clear who’s what: Darla and Angel are the parents, period, and Dru and Spike are the kids, period.  Or at least it’s very clearly big sister and brother/little sister and brother.  There is no room for flexibility with these guys, and who’s in charge is clear, period.  Age isn’t relative, it’s very necessary.  But despite the fact that these guys are evil and crazy, their interactions are intriguing.  A lot of bad goes down, yes, but… well, this.

2. The Scoobies (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
(Okay, at this point I’ve seen enough of Angel to have seen a lot of the Whirlwind flashbacks, which I’d read about anyway, but I’m still in season two, so I don’t know enough about the whole Angel Investigations group to really discuss their forever dynamic.  Since people add in on the fairly regular.  I love them as far as I know them, though.  I love them a lot.  I just don’t have intelligent thoughts in excess yet.)  This is a whole lot of characters: Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Willow (Alyson Hannigan), Xander (Nicholas Brendon), Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), Angel (David Boreanaz), Oz (Seth Green), Anya (Emma Caulfield), Riley (Marc Blucas), Tara (Amber Benson), Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), Spike (James Marsters), even sort of Andrew (Tom Lenk) and Faith (Eliza Dushku), not to mention I guess technically the Potentials sort of count, and eh, I’m probably forgetting to throw others in there because there are so many Scoobies.  What I love about the Scooby Gang is that yes, they’re a family, they’re a family easily, but they’re variable.  The lineup changes all the time.  Several of the Scoobies are reformed baddies to one extent or another.  The group is comprised of Slayers, of witches, of vampires, of ex-demons, of ex-energy blobs, of (ex-)soldiers, of (ex-)Watchers, of werewolves, of just regular people hanging out fighting the good fight.  Provided they want to fight the good fight and aren’t assholes, any variety of person can wind up a Scooby, and everyone gives something unique and necessary to the group.  Giles is the dad, of course; Buffy and Dawn play big/little sister pretty obviously, Xander’s the big brother, Willow’s sort of the middle sister who’s trying to prove herself, Cordy and Anya are the sometimes-abrasive cousins, Tara’s the big sister who ends up playing mom, Oz is the middle brother who’s shrugging and going along with it, Angel’s sort of the older cousin type who never knows what to do with himself at these family things, Andrew’s the twerpy little brother, Spike and Faith are the rebellious middle children who also want to prove themselves, it’s just this big mess of how people work together.

1. The crew of Serenity (Firefly)
The best best ain’t always blood family that ever has been and ever will be.  Literally they are the reason I started saying “family ain’t always blood,” which should be abso-bloody-lutely obvious, really.  Mal (Nathan Fillion), Zoe (Gina Torres), Wash (Alan Tudyk), Kaylee (Jewel Staite), Jayne (Adam Baldwin), Inara (Morena Baccarin), Simon (Sean Maher), River (Summer Glau), Book (Ron Glass), and it doesn’t matter that Zoe and Wash are married or that Simon and River are siblings for true, it is perfect.  Mal’s the protective big brother and occasionally the daddy, Book’s sort of the grandpa or the kindly uncle (sorry, Book, it’s true), Zoe and Inara are big sisters forever, Jayne’s the douche big brother, Wash and Kaylee are the middle siblings (Kaylee tending to be little sister a lot of the time, but not always), Simon’s the mannersly big brother, River’s the littlest sister forever.  But the magical thing about these guys is that even in all of the gēgē/dìdì/jiějie/mèimei stuff, it’s not like the roles are static.  Big sisters/brothers look after little sisters/brothers or after each other, but little sisters, for example, look after big brothers (and everyone else).  Captain Daddy doesn’t treat l’il albatross like a child exactly (sometimes treats her like a liability, but that’s when it’s reasonable, not knowing everything, to feel that way) and when Zoe comic-canonically births her child, that child is going to have a whole passel of aunts and uncles.  L’il Kaylee is clearly everyone’s little sister (the baby before River shows up) but nobody ever underestimates her on account of it.  Everyone looks out for each other.  They made this family that counts for so much, that often counts for more than the families they were born to anymore, that matters so much they’ll all die for it if need be and a couple of them do.  It’s a family made by circumstance, by proximity, by camaraderie, by belief, but by love most of all, absolute and pure and real familial love that is so so good.

–your fangirl heroine.

Whedon Wednesday :: so I have a little bit of a vampire family couple thing.

So this is the week of True Blood, and that means it’s… kind of the week of Nora Gainesborough (Lucy Griffiths).  (As I’ve before said, I am in love, and love makes you do the wacky.  So roll with it.  Or, y’know, come back later if you’d rather.  I’m not taking attendance.)

If you’ll remember, last year I was talking about a bunch of little things that made me think Buffy thoughts.  There were fewer of those this year, but I fully acknowledge that some of my inherent weakness for Eric/Nora – not necessarily for Nora herself, because there are a thousand other reasons I’ve listed previously why that happened – is because of my feelings about Spike/Dru.  So tonight?  I present to you a discussion of how things that are so theoretically the same in ways can have drastically different results.  With all the spoilers.

First off, aesthetics, namely the blond male/brown-haired British woman vampire thing.  (Even though Eric’s [Alexander Skarsgard] really more dirty/dark blond nowadays.)  That’s a surface similarity, yes.  There’s also the vampire relations thing, though Drusilla (Juliet Landau) had been the one to sire Spike (James Marsters), whereas Eric and Nora were both sired by Godric (Allan Hyde).  But Dru and Spike were sexin’ and Eric and Nora are sexin’.  So.

Drusilla is really the only Buffyverse vampire who seems to put a whole lot of stock in the family line thing, whereas it seems much more culturally prevalent in the True Blood ‘verse – in addition to makers and children, there’s the issue of siblings, which isn’t even relevant in the Buffyverse (I suppose you could make assumptions about Wishverse Willow and Xander, but even that’s tentative), and family loyalty seems to be definitely more the rule, whereas the Whirlwind was definitely more the exception.  In both situations, being vampire-related doesn’t seem to stop folks from the aforementioned sexin’, though, so there’s that.

But here’s the real difference in family presentation.  Season two of Buffy was largely dominated by the plot of Angelus (David Boreanaz), made instantly evil by his sex with Buffy, wreaking havoc and eventually deciding to end the world because why not?  Dru, made starry-eyed by her sire, was going along with the plan; Spike, still devoted to his sire, felt that Angelus was driving them apart.  Besides, ending the world is lame.  So once Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) the love of Angel’s undead life is there to fight Angelus, an apocalyptically apathetic Spike knocks an unrepentant Dru out and skedaddles out of there.

Season five of True Blood was largely dominated by the plot of the vampire Authority getting not-good vampire religion and Bill (Stephen Moyer), made slowly evil by his getting of said religion, wreaking havoc and eventually deciding to set in motion the dawn of a new era in the world because the vampire Bible tells him so.  Nora, made starry-eyed by vampire religion, was going along with the plan; Eric, still devoted to his (y’know, dead) sire, felt that vampire religion was driving them apart.  Besides, massacring humans everywhere is lame.  So before anyone else gets dragged into the plan (except dearly departed Molly [Tina Majorino]), a determined Eric knocks an unrepentant Nora out and tries to skedaddle out of there.

Except there were still three more episodes of the season left, so they get caught.  And then Eric and Nora do blood-drugs and Eric pretends to convert to crazy vampire religion.  And then Nora starts thinking about their (y’know, dead) sire and repents hardcore.  And then Eric and Nora fly off into the night, hear that Eric’s progeny is in danger, gather backup forces which includes Sookie (Anna Paquin) the love of Bill’s unlife, and head back into the fray to do some saving and ass-kicking (the latter of which was the plan anyway) their own damn selves.  Oh, and Bill takes all of the blood-drugs and in the last minute explodes into a bloody mess and is resurrected all messy and naked and maybe godlike or maybe just demonic.  That too.

In short: season two of Buffy ends with my delightful vampire couple being driven apart (not to reconcile), season five of True Blood ends with my delightful vampire couple being driven closer together.  Spike and Dru head off by themselves, Eric and Nora join up with the rest of the created family (ugh and I love created families).  And I understand these differences, and I’m not taking sides, but it’s an interesting contrast of arcs: Spike/Dru is the first we know of Spike, and the breakup with Dru eventually facilitates Spike’s feelings for Buffy, whereas Eric/Nora happens once Eric/Sookie has already happened many times.  In 5×14 of Buffy, “Crush,” Drusilla is presented as a direct adversary to the Spike/Buffy relationship, someone that Spike once cared about and now cannot, whereas in 5×12 of True Blood, “Save Yourself,” Nora is presented as someone that Eric cares about and Sookie is presented as someone that Eric also cares about and it’s not a competition.  This could well be to do with the timing of the vampire couples in regards to the overall arc, but.

Despite the fact that Dru sired Spike, Spike does a lot of taking care of Dru in the first part of the season, because she’s infirm.  To be fair, Dru then takes care of Spike when he’s infirm, though not quite as attentively as per Angelus.  The issue of who sired who is only really prevalent in flashbacks, and that’s mostly just Dru prouding on her darling deadly boy ‘cause she likes being a mommy.  Even though vampire mommies and their children can and do still sex.  Spike also takes care of Dru because she’s crazy.  He acknowledges that she’s crazy, more than once and very openly, but he’s fine with it.  He loves her no matter what, at least for those first hundred-some years.

There is never an issue of infirmity regarding the Eric/Nora relationship, but there is one of crazy: crazy Nora is still more clear-headed than crazy Dru, though both of them float around wearing pretty dresses and are totally more evil than they let on.  Eric doesn’t do a whole lot of taking care of crazy Nora, though, and since the crazy is more self-inflicted and behavior-patterny than actual psychological damagey he’s not exactly all “pat, pat, I’ll go along with it.”  Eric always loves Nora, in their weird messed-up siblings/f-buddies that are actually totally kosher to coexist way, but he doesn’t really like her a lot when she’s crazy.  He’s hopeful that she’ll snap out of it, which she eventually does, not because of him exactly but because she just does.

The difference in the presentation of Spike/Dru and Eric/Nora is that the former were presented from their entrance as antagonists, whereas the latter were presented as… morally gray who-knows-whats.  Spike and Dru’s relationship, despite being delightful and still one of my favorites in the canon, was clearly based in wickedness and bad deeds, and bad characters don’t get to stay bad for more than a season in the Buffyverse, not really.  That’s just how it’s structured to work.  So one or the other of them had to turn good, or at least morally gray that led to eventually good, and that one was Spike.  Which is a pretty interesting arc of itself, so.

Eric’s arc started long before Nora was probably even an idea in the writers’ minds; he was morally gray and he’s… slightly less morally gray now, and in his way I think he is a good guy, but he’s not a Good Guy.  I don’t think he would personally sit for that, in all honesty.  Eric and Nora’s relationship was a thing that had been on-off for hundreds of years but was only introduced to us once Eric was already having his moral journey of sorts, and it was clearly based in… well, they were vampire siblings who had been on-off together for hundreds of years.  There is no discussion of them going on merry slaughtering rampages with Godric, though I’m sure at least one merry slaughtering rampage probably took place over time.

Nora herself was presented as morally gray in the extreme from day one, and as evidenced by the fact that she was playing for at least three different teams throughout twelve episodes, this is valid.  Eric played for a couple of teams too, but we and he both knew it was faking; he makes it very clear that the old, pre-evil god Bill was more of a mainstreamer than he would ever be, but at the same time he doesn’t condone the senseless massacring of all humans.  Nora, in her crazy period, did condone that, but late in the game, she undertook a redemption mission of her own alongside Eric.  (Wow, in this way these two are more like Buffy and Faith, and I literally just realized that.  Weird.)

In short, Spike/Dru was a wonderful moment in time that I still love with all my heart.  I adore it.  It is my favorite kind of evilcrazywrongbad love.  Appreciate Spike’s redemption arc as much as I do, evil Spike is still my favorite Spike, and I actually love that Dru was the one that stayed pretty much evil forever.  I never really rooted for them in their overall mission as characters, because ending the world is lame, but I love them together in that moment.  Eric/Nora is a wonderful moment in time that I will choose to believe is going to at least on-off continue, at least unless the hypothetical Eric/Sookie endgame comes to pass.  I appreciate Eric’s overall arc, I appreciate Nora’s smaller arc, I appreciate them.  I would have loved Nora even if she had stayed evil, but I love her redemption too (mostly because I’m pretty sure that evil Nora would have met the true death, and I really, really want her to stay around forever).  And I root for both of them together and separately and just in general.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: well, all of that happened.

That’s the best way I can think of to sum up the True Blood season finale, honestly.

I started watching all of this with my heart in my throat, because I wanted only one thing.  But I got it.  I think.  And I also got at least three other things I didn’t know I wanted necessarily but yeah, I totally wanted.  So.  And, y’know, SPOILERS holy goodness so many spoilers.  (And… yeah, I don’t even apologize for half of this post being on one subject, because I am eyehearting and have been and sorry, it happens.)

• The only thing I wanted and I got: Nora (Lucy Griffiths) to actually make it out alive.  I mean, probably.  I have said it multiple times before and I will say it again: I do not care that she was evil for a little while and crazy for a little while, a character does not have to be a saint to be interesting to me and honestly she is my favorite kind of not a saint.  (I feel like clarifying mostly because I was skipping around the Nora Gainesborough tag on tumblr looking for gifs, and I didn’t do a lot of reading because I’ve mostly learned my lesson from other tags [mostly the Daenerys Targaryen tag] but still.  I allow people to have their opinions, I respect that they do.  But when people are just gif-reacting and/or bitching at my babies, I skip over it.  And when people have to pit two characters against each other to prove who’s better, I skip over it.  Opinions are allowed, I just don’t want to make myself cranky by reading them too much.)  I mean, yes.  Evil and crazy are bad things.  But, well, my crazy British vampire problem.  And my aforementioned thing of sometimes getting attached to characters that are not strictly protagonist material.  Also, we haven’t gotten a lot of it, but you know what?  I like that Nora is snarky as hell sometimes.  I like that there was much banter and that she had to be physically restrained from going after Sookie (Anna Paquin) but then promised all grudgingly and I like that she got to drop lines like “you smell like something I’ve dreamed of.”  She really is Eric’s (Alexander Skarsgard) bratty little sister in some ways (and I sort of like that Nora has an attitude about the rest of Eric’s family to an extent, because it’s not enough attitude to be a problem but it feels reasonable), except for they’re vampire related so I don’t feel weird shipping the hell out of it.  (I mean, I have said before I’m good with Eric/Sookie, but Eric/Nora tugs at my screwed up heartstrings.  Which probably accounts for why I’ve been drawing them all week.)  I want all the flashbacks next season with her, because I am fully comfortable making up stories about her, but I would rather know proper ones so I don’t have to retcon my own headcanon.
• One thing I didn’t know that I wanted but I got: one little throwaway snark line that proves that in addition to having the previously crazy thing and the cute nose/eyes/face thing going and the delightfully morally gray thing and the British thing all going for her, my Nora is also at least a little bit of a vampire techie goddess.  “Do you honestly think you understand the system I helped design better than I do?”  I mean, this could be taken a lot of ways, but the way I take it is this: yeah, Nora hasn’t gotten out a whole lot, ’cause of being with the Authority.  But she also knows how to do a lot of stuff because of that.  She’s apparently always been a political genius, but she’s learned things she needs to know as per her job, and why can’t that include computerized security systems and stuff?  I mean, there are/were vampires like dearly departed Molly (Tina Majorino) to run techie stuff, but at least some of the chancellors would have to be involved too, and Nora strikes me as the kind of girl who gets involved not just in a supervisory capacity.  And there she is messing with the system and looking up at Eric like “don’t even” and yep.  Until told otherwise, I will fully institute the headcanon of my Nora the vampire techie goddess, because, well.
• A second thing I didn’t know I wanted as much as I ended up wanting but I got: Tara (Rutina Wesley) and Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten).  I mean, they’ve sort of thrown hints all season, so it wasn’t a surprise, but I hadn’t consciously been thinking “oh I need this to happen.”  But really, interracial lesbian vampire couples.  That is just such a beautiful phrase.  Their dynamic has evolved logically and reasonably, and despite the circumstances of the turning, I’ve, as mentioned, loved to watch Pam start to actually give a damn about Tara.  Pam never gives a damn about anyone (except for Eric) but, suck though she may at expressing it, it’s totally easy to see she’s been growing to like Tara.  Tara is sarcastic all over Pam all the time, but I think that’s a good thing for Pam: it works, because Pam is more comfortable with sarcasm than with feelings, but then there was the rescuing (god, I love vampire Tara) and the kissing and it was so passionate and legit.  And I’m really, really happy about this being now a thing.
• A third thing I didn’t know I wanted but I got: big bad Bill (Stephen Moyer).  I am honestly shocked it took me until this episode to start consciously thinking Angelus thoughts about this season’s Bill, but it did, and I did, and whoops he’s transcended that even.  Rising from the blood all naked and gross and evil evil.  I kind of love it, actually.  Book!Bill is basically irrelevant by this point, but they’re not going to write him off the show, and since book plots have been thrown out the window, well, this is a viable alternative indeed and  I think this is going to make for an excellent and insane next year.
• Also: aw, Jess (Deborah Ann Woll) all wibbly.  What the hell, craycray haunted Jason (Ryan Kwanten).  Fun while you lasted, craycray Russell (Denis O’Hare).  What in the world is going on, Sam (Sam Trammell) and Luna (Janina Gavankar).  Your assertive declarations of intent made me sort of into you for the first time, Alcide (Joe Manganiello).  As always, I eagerly await next year.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: one thing (temporarily) ends and another begins.

Aka, the Sunday I wished the Tonys weren’t because I wanted immediate Mad Men season finale and True Blood season premiere and the weekdays I made up for it.

Obviously I’m into a lot of television programs.  But of currently-running programs I think I am the most intensely into three right now: Game of Thrones and Mad Men and True Blood.  (As evidenced by massive collections of posting pertaining to them, often in sequence, and the immense ladyfeels I have about some of their characters.)  So it was sort of neat and tidy that Game of Thrones ended one week and the next week Mad Men wrapped up and True Blood its place. The tried and true HBO Sunday night pattern will not fail me.

So.  SPOILERS I GUESS.   Bullet-pointy as always.

Mad Men:

• After two weeks of everything happening quickly and all at once, the season finale actually felt sort of slow.  Not bad-slow, at least bad in terms of boring; it was just a different pace than the breakneck speed of angst and tragedy we’ve been subjected to recently.  It’s what aftermaths feel like though: the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the fact that this episode was finely scripted fallout and building tension.  Building to what?  Well, I guess in eighteen months or however long they make us wait this time we’ll find out.
• One of my people compared it to the series finale of The Sopranos: it’s fascinating, and lots is happening, but it’s all so relatively small compared to what’s gone down in the past that you just have to feel like it’s just paving the way for something horrendous.  It doesn’t matter that not a lot of horrendous actually goes down.  It’s the art of making you think it could.
• We’ve had a season now of Megan (Jessica Paré) as a main character, and I still can’t decide how I feel about her.  I like that she’s willing to call Don (Jon Hamm) on his bull.  I don’t necessarily like how he sometimes babies her.  I like that she’s ~going after her dreams~ in theory but it also makes me wary for future plot dramatics.  I don’t know if I have any defining feelings about her a a person.
• I still can’t decide how I feel about Don’s getting Megan the commercial.  On one hand, it was the right thing to do (although seriously, that was their Beauty and the Beast setup?  She looked like a German beer festival waitress in that costume) but on the other hand, it makes me very, very wary.  That look on Don’s face at the end, I think I know what that might mean and I don’t like it.  He’s been so good this season.
• I think it’s interesting that every time we’ve seen an adult female’s mother on the show this season, it’s served the function (at least for a little while) of questioning the daughter’s modernity.  Megan’s mother Marie (Julia Ormond) has shown up a couple of times now to be passive-aggressive and to wind up boinking Roger (John Slattery), but this time she also basically told Megan to give it up and let Don have her as a kept wife, essentially as arm candy or a trained housepet that cooks dinner.  Peggy’s mother Katherine (Myra Turley) really only showed up long enough to criticize Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) for deciding to cohabitate with her boyfriend Abe (Charlie Hofheimer) without marrying him.  And Joan’s mother Gail (Christine Estabrook) has been there to support her and to help take care of her child, but she still had plenty of things to say in the first few episodes that made Joan (Christina Hendricks) really cranky.  (“Greg’s not going to allow you to work.”  “Allow me?”)
• Oh and while we’re on the subject of Joan.  Let’s talk about Joan.  My darling should have some proper meta slated for sometime in the nearish future, so I’m not going to spend time going into the subject of what transpired two episodes ago right now.  (Except to say ow, my heart.)  I just want to buy her a drink and give her a hug and tell her it’s okay.  She shouldn’t feel like she’s expected to solve everyone’s problems, and she should know that she certainly shouldn’t feel like her only worth in problem-solving or in anything else is her ability to use womanly wiles.  She can use them like nobody’s business, but this way of thinking is legitimately not her fault.  This way of thinking is the bull that she’s surrounded by on a daily basis; the if only I mentality is understandable, it really is, but baby, it wouldn’t have solved the problem.  I also want to tell her that yes, the guys are basically jerks, and yes, she deserves better coworkers.
• Completely shallowly, though, I will (again) exclaim GLASSES CHAIIIIN. 
• You know who I want to hit the most lately?  Pete (Vincent Kartheiser).  I want to punch the smug little smirk off of his face and shake the weird entitlement/white knight hybrid mentality out of his skull.  He is not a good coworker.  He is not a good husband.  He is not a good self-actualized person.  He should really work on those things.  He owes it to himself as a person and he owes it to Trudy (Alison Brie) who I will irrationally defend forever.  I’m not saying he’s a bad person (though these last episodes haven’t exactly given a lot of evidence that he isn’t), but he needs to figure out his issues.  He needs to sort out why he behaves in such ways as he does and not do it.
• Also, this is the second Mad Men season finale that has had a sequence that made us stare at each other and go “wait, this must be a dream.”  We had that reaction regarding Don’s proposal to Megan, and we had that reaction to Pete’s weird avenging hero-that-fails scene on the train.  I’m still coming to terms with the whole business of Pete and Beth (Alexis Bledel) and her husband Howard (Jeff Clarke).  I still don’t know what to make of it.
• Basically, you know.  Feelings.

True Blood:

• WELL.  Unlike Mad Men, which picks up months and months and months later, True Blood picked up this season literally right after last season ended.  Actually backtracked to a couple of events that transpired in the finale.  Considering the cliff-hangery nature of said events, that made sense, but.
• I have fewer things to say about this, because I love True Blood a lot but it does not get me quite as feelingsy right off the bat; also premieres don’t get me as feelingsy as finales.  Probably because they’re introducing plots and ideas and things, not wrapping them up (for now).  But this is not from a lack of enjoyment.  I did enjoy it quite a lot.
• Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) is brilliant and I really really hope that she and Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) have a chance to make up amid all the AVL political messes and surprise-vampire-Tara (Rutina Wesley) (??) and many other things that are going to be going on.  She may be apologizing to Eric, but she is not apologizing for who she is.  She’s still good ol’ caustic Pam.  And I love her for it.
• Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) is beautiful.  I don’t really care about her hanging around with drunk college kids, though I see the point it served, and when did she put green in her hair, and that was a fancy Rock Band setup.  (Makes sense, it being all in King Bill’s Grand Mansion and all.  Though I can’t imagine Bill ever playing Rock Band.)  Mostly I am just devoting a bullet point to Jess because of when she burst into Jason’s (Ryan Kwanten) and told off Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian) and… whoops.  That sounded a hell of a lot like babygirl verbally declaring her intent all assertively.  (And while wearing a corset, which… yes, was there before, but.  But.)
• Well, I’m worried that Nora (Lucy Griffiths) is eventually doomed.  I don’t know when, it might not be for a while, and I hope this is one of my failure predictions.  I like her.  I am fully aware that this is completely irrational since she hasn’t been there for that long and my best reasons for liking her are that I like vampire family structure stuff, I like ladyvampires who are capable, I like that she was wearing leather wristlength gloves while she and Eric got, y’know, reacquainted and that she kept her bra on even though it’s True Blood where you can show all the boobies you want (and the gloves and the bra coordinated), and I like British people talking.  But.
• The synopsis on our television for the episode contained, after the descriptions of what everyone else was up to, the phrase “Alcide warns Sookie.”  Seriously, other than wolf politics what does Alcide (Joe Mangianello) do but warn Sookie (Anna Paquin)?
• Eric and Bill (Stephen Moyer) are buddies now, okay.  They couldn’t have thought they were getting out of this that easily though.  If it was going to succeed, it wouldn’t have happened until the second-to-last or last episode of the season.
• Also, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) is a pro.
• This is officially nothing like the book.  And I do not care at all.

–your fangirl heroine.