A Certain Slant of Light

I stole this 30 Day TV Meme from laurelcrowned, because the questions looked like so much fun. First up: A show that should never have been canceled.

Which is a hard question! I was woeful when Pushing Daisies got canceled, but I think Fuller wrapped up all the plot threads nicely (even if it was a bit rushed), and the show had such a delicate tonal balance that it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t have fallen to pieces if it got six seasons and a movie.

Similarly, I mourned Veronica Mars, but as much as I love it, it was an absolute mess at the end of the third season, and I strongly suspect if it got a fourth season it would have become merely a hollow shadow of my beloved show. Clearly going out at a comparatively strong moment was preferable. (Of course, it’s easier to say this now that we have the movie and the book series and both of them are full of awesome, because it’s clear that the hiatus was a creation boon.)

But there are a couple of shows that I would give my eyeteeth for at least another season. I’m still bitter about Wonderfalls’ cancellation, because it left so many unanswered questions, damnit.

And I will be forever bitter that they killed Rome, because I wanted to see the plotlines that they tried to squeeze into the last four episodes of the show unfold properly over the course of two seasons, like they were supposed to be. And it meant that Brutus’s death was nothing but a footnote, when it was originally supposed to be the season finale! I am still not happy about their casting for Brutus (couldn’t they have found someone who gave at least a faint impression of having a moral compass?), but still, he should not have been cheated out of an episode devoted to his glorious death.

( The rest of the questions in the meme )

You guys you guys! I have the best new idea for a Wonderfalls fic! A sequel for something I wrote two years ago, because my brain works in mysterious ways...

Anyway! Jaye's college roommate comes to town, right, wearing a smiley face t-shirt and a unicorn pendent. She's an indie filmmaker and she's got this just AMAZING idea for a film about unicorns! and the magic inherent in everyday objects! (Jaye laughs and laughs and laughs) and she wants Jaye to STAR and Jaye is all, "Unicorns...?" but agrees.

AND THEN EVERYTHING GOES WRONG.

I think the voices will abandon Jaye for part of the fic. She will feel bereft.

Also, Aaron and Mahandra get a kitten.

You probably do not remember, my little onions, but a few entries back I threatened the world with a Pushing Daisies/Wonderfalls crossover. But I remembered, and and this afternoon a flash of genius struck me and I have ever since been writing, writing, writing, SEVEN THOUSAND WORDS IN ONE DAY, BITCH, and I've writed a story!

Almost! It is not quite done! (Although it's done enough to destroy my sense of grammar!) And it is probably quite terrible on account of being written at such speeds, but this doesn't matter at the moment (although it undoubtedly will in the morning) because I am right now of the opinion that I am SCINTILLATINGLY BRILLIANT and have written a masterpiece involving pie, arguments, sappy romance, unnecessary snits, and more arguments, because arguments are fun, as are run-on sentences, although I left the run-ons out of the story and saved them for this journal entry.

And then, in an overflow of scintillation, I started an entirely different story called "Satan Was My Prom Date" (which is actually inspired by a comment in today's slacktivist entry, because nothing is inspiring like mocking the Left Behind series), which is actually about a vampire, not Satan, but that's okay, he's related to Satan somehow, and anyway vampires are SO YESTERDAY, don't you agree?

I considered naming him Edward. But then my sense of self-preservation kicked in and I named him Ethan instead.

Also, I finished Pushing Daisies the series (the fact that I have been mainlining it may have contributed to my STROKE OF GENIUS), and it has the BEST ENDING EVER. Hurrah! It has if not supplanted Veronica Mars at least drawn level to it in my List of Most Awesome Series Ever Ever Ever (with many exclamation points).

I think perhaps I ought to sleep, or else I will scintillate the house right off its cinderblocks.

I got back from the summer program a couple days ago, and have been in a state of general enervation ever since; but hopefully my brain is starting to regenerate. I need it back; I have a couple of fics I want to get finished this summer.

First, a sequel to Homing Pigeon (yes, I realize sequels are usually a foolish idea, especially in fandoms the size of my thumbnail, but what can I say, I'm a slave to my art) - in which Jaye tries to commit insurance fraud, Eric realizes that Jaye is not a goddess who lives on Mount Olympus, and Aaron and Mahandra buy a kitten.

I am not sure how these things fit together. I think the kitten is probably the key.

And second, I have this totally awesome idea for a Torchwood story where Torchwood goes to Barcelona and Owen has to dress up as a matador so they can defeat a blood-sucking alien that has been possessing bulls. In the process he gets hit on by essentially everyone on the team. A lot. Okay, I don't actually have a plot for this one either, but trust me! It will be great! It involves Owen wearing the world's tightest pants! How could this possibly go wrong?

Also, Owen is mean to Tosh (intentionally and unintentionally), and then she kicks his ass at flamenco. That's got to be a winner right there.

Okay, maybe my brain needs some more time to regenerate. Wheeeeee!!!!

I think there are about two people on my f-list who have actually seen Wonderfalls, but don't let that stop any of the rest of you from reading this. It is a beautiful fic. Really!

The only things you really need to know are that our heroine, Jaye, has an attitude and a boyfriend-like person named Eric, lives in a trailer park, and gets ordered around by inanimate animal shaped objects on a regular basis. All American girl, really.

Also, the fic was both beta'd and bannered by the wonderful visualthinker11, so many thanks for that.



Title: Homing Pigeon
Author: osprey_archer
Pairings: mostly Jaye/Eric
Rating: PG
Beta/Banner maker: visualthinker11
Summary: “I didn’t burn down my trailer on purpose. I just wanted to shut the face cards up.” Oh, that sounded so much better. She sunk into her ratty coat like a turtle. “They ruined my evening.”


( Act the first )

( Act the second )

( Act the Third )

IT’S KAYLEE! IT’S KAYLEE!! Except not really, as she’s playing Eric’s evil harpy almost-ex-wife. Yes, it’s another television ex-girlfriend (well, wife in this case) who exists to have her character assassinated. The writers managed to make her both slutty and prudish, which is quite a feat, but they did at least refrain from making her a psychotic killer.

Still. Her apparent vileness is unfortunate because it makes Eric look like a real idiot for marrying her in the first place, given they appear to have nothing in common.

I’m probably the only person who’s a little sorry that he and Heidi are definitely over by the end. On the one hand, he’s a really excellent romantic foil for Jaye, but on the other, if he left with Heidi to make an honest attempt at working things out, that would have been thematically consistent with the rest of the show. Letting Eric go try to patch up his marriage to Heidi is the right thing to do, even if it hurts like hell, and it would mean that the talking animals are about the greater good of the universe, not Jaye’s personal path to happiness.

On the other hand, I really do like Eric. And Eric/Jaye. So it’s not a complete wash.

***

visualthinker11, are you still interested in writing that Wonderfalls fic? I have some scenelets here that might serve as a basis.

( Jaye, Eric, and the Hell Toaster )

Jaye still rocks. Eric, still full of awesome. Jaye/Eric, still sweet. Hopefully it will continue now that they’re more or less going out, which so often precipitates a downward spiral in television shows.

It’s sweet, though misguided, that he thinks Jaye is really a lovely person. I think there’s a very suppressed part of her that wants to be a lovely person, but trying to have a relationship with the part of a person that they attempt to silence with a jackhammer surely is unwise.

Especially given that Eric’s already had his heart irreparably cracked.

I like that backstories keep coming back to bite. In the first few episodes I was worried, because so many backstories (particularly Eric’s) sounded like farces, that the character backgrounds were just throwaway gags and the characters were really just caricatures. But they’ve gained depth.

The other thing about Eric, which I wasn’t expecting: he’s as close as the show gets to a moral center.

I don’t mean that Wonderfalls doesn’t have a moral center—the show has some guiding moral precepts (be kind, be compassionate, judge people by what they do and not who they are)—but it doesn’t have a character who embodies it, like Star Trek had Captain Kirk or Veronica Mars has Wallace and Keith. All of the characters go off the deep end sometimes. But Eric seems to have a better grasp on basic decency than Mahandra or Jaye or Jaye’s family.

This does not, however, excuse him for his Mr. Hallmark Card moments in episode 8. Not even giving that bratty lovesick kid (who’s a HOOT) a talking to or making out with Jaye will make Mr. Hallmark Card go away.

Speaking of episode 8: The dad marrying the Russian bride is creepily Freudian, but the kid had enough issues already that this probably won’t make things WORSE.

Other things:

Jaye’s brother and his discussion with the psychiatrist made me giggle, as did his obsession with the cow creamer. If the show had continued, Jaye and her talking animals would have led him into a spiritual crisis. (Eventual resolution: Hinduism?—given that it was a cow that was talking.)

I’m not quite sure about episode seven. Vague ideas about Truth hang around the episode like smoke, but they never settle into any definite theme. The writers appear to be in a bind: the episodes tend to go for themes that are heartfelt yet hip, but there doesn’t seem to be that middle ground here.

Absolute truth isn’t very hip, but it’s heartfelt. “Truth is in the eye of the beholder,” or truth is all about appearance, or even something satirical about the relationship between the media and truth, is much more modern, but it’s also really unbearably cynical given the context.

Which really defines the tightrope the whole show is walking.

***

On a sort of random tangent: I don’t know if Wonderfalls will ever get to this story, but during Victorian times there was a fellow named Blondin who walked across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Once he stopped in the middle to cook an egg.

The British newspapers refused to publish the story until they sent their own correspondent to verify, because only a few weeks earlier they’d giddily published a story about someone who walked across the falls on stilts. Alas! it was an American hoax.