handful_ofdust | Let's List Again...Like We Did Last Winter...

Spent last night fighting my sinuses, which I'm still sort of doing, and this morning watching the first two episodes of legendary cancelled show The Inside, probably best described as a trial run for Criminal Minds in which the BAU consists of Clarice Starling (if she'd been kidnapped as a kid, spent a year being groomed either as an apprentice or a spouse by a still-uncaught unsub, and somehow managed to free herself without anyone else's help), Ed Exley and Dudley Smith crossed with Hannibal Lecter, plus a wisecracking redhead and Adam Baldwin.

The showpiece of the narrative is the weird OT3 developed between boss "Web" Webster (Peter Coyote), victim-turned-predator's-predator Rebecca Locke (Rachel Nichols) and upstanding young man with a conscience Paul Ryan (Jay Harrington); Webster's been grooming Rebecca from afar since she applied to the FBI, knowing her special mix of pattern-recognition, data-mining and instinctual empathy for both sides of the equation will drive her to constantly put herself in the sort of danger that cracks cases--she's a cold, empty, angry little justice-golem cobbled together from scar tissue and lies, so traumatized she barely has any time to feel her own fear. But she sure is pretty, which helps draw/bond Ryan to her, and sparks the duel of prospective "ownership" between puppet-master Webster and Ryan the white knight protector: "Look after her," Webster says, at the end of the pilot. "You can be sure of it," Ryan replies. Naturally, neither thinks to ask Rebecca her thoughts on the matter, assuming she even has any...

So yeah, makes a sort of "sense" that CM has apparently now hired Nichols to replace JJ (swapping out one blonde for another), casting her as a profiler whose father turned out to be a serial killer, which naturally gives her wound-based superpowers. I've heard from women who hate this trope and women who love this trope in equal measure, though I have to wonder whether or not the lingering appeal of The Inside is basically that Rebecca genuinely is the protagonist, the person who the show is based around--and you just don't get that, most of the time. Ever, really, even now. (A factor which probably lead directly to its cancellation, along with/as much as the quite amazing routine perversity of its subject-matter; still, any show that takes its cues from Se7en by way of CSI and has male-on-male rape as the climax in Episode frickin' Two is bound to get at least part of my vote.;))

Okay, so, on with the round-up. Today: Books.

I re-read a lot of stuff this year, caught up with various authors (the earlier work of Gary Braunbeck, for example) and also spent a ridiculous amount of time reading either for complete brain-death or various awards--the Sunburst at the start of the year, vs. the Shirley Jacksons right now. And I'm not even vaguely done with that latter process, either, though I intend to jack it up fairly soon, so don't expect to see many of the free books I've been getting through the mail on here. Which leaves the things I enjoyed most, as follows--

Bitter Seeds, Ian Tregillis
The Reapers Are The Angels, Alden Bell
Sandman Slim and Kill the Dead, Richard Kadrey
The Drowning City and The Bone Palace, Amanda Downum
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin
House of Windows, John Lagan
Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Jonathan L. Howard
A Good and Happy Child, Justin Evans
A Dark Matter, Peter Straub
Apartment 16, Adam LG Nevill
Northwest Passages, Barbara Roden
Indigo Springs, A.M. Dellamonica
Stealing Fire, Jo Graham
The Native Star, M.K. Hobson
Mr Shivers, Robert Jackson Bennett

I wish I'd liked The Broken Kingdoms better, but I didn't overall (though that doesn't mean I won't read the next instalment). The Bone Palace, OTOH, was even better than its predecessor, and I'm very much hoping we see some of those characters again. Johannes Cabal, also, was a wonderful surprise--I'm not normally too into horror-comedy, but this is dry as dust, hilarious and black to the max, with a wonderfully dreadful main character and a cast of total freaks; can't wait to read the sequel. Northwest Passages is that rare single-author collection that works all the way through, as opposed to throwing up amazing stories here and there; my failure to pass it through the Sunbursts' gullet still haunts me. Oh, and intertribal: A Good and Happy Child is about a male possession-victim...maybe. Or possibly just a guy with problems whose family tends to cast said problems in Devil-got-ya terms. One way or the other, very cool.

Aaaand...again, I am tired, so if you want to know more about the rest, ask. I've mentioned a lot of them here already.

Now: Off to arrange a visit from the plumber...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm very much hoping we see some of those characters again.

Cross your fingers that I can sell the crime-fighting demimonde spin-off sequel!

(And thank you!)

Oh no, thank you! I meant what I said when I was first reading it...I absolutely loved the menage of girly Savedra and butch Ashlin, both equally tough and canny, plus Nikos Alexios, luckiest king EVAR. And everything else was equally great, so.;)

Thanks for the heads up. I'm reading through the free sample on Amazon right now - I like his style. Unfortunately I myself will be writing a female possession-victim, but there are plenty of demonic boys hanging out in the book anyways...

Yeah, I just seemed to remember that around The Last Exorcism-time you were asking why there never seem to be any possessed dude stories, and--here you go!;)

For that matter, not a whole lot of possessed women over the age of 25, either! It's just a spiritually dangerous time, I guess...

12-24 also a big age for female religious martyrs, so, yeah.

Hey, that correlation actually makes a lot of sense! Never thought of it that way.

Certainly congruent with the "Emily Rose was/will be a saint" theory, I guess. And in terms of Judy Kiss, I always saw it as having been inflicted on her to derail some sort of spiritual flourishing; Fr. Wale and Fr. Frye would've thought it would be to keep her from becoming a saint, but Mr Nobody later lets slip that Judy had Antichrist potential, so...that, too.

Mr. Nobody don't like competition? Or was it one of those "don't destroy the world, it's so much fun for me to screw with" things?

It's complicated--Mr Nobody is running a couple of different games we don't immediately get the scope of--but yeah, put it down mainly to the latter.

I can't take credit - Margaret Visser tends to posit that one a lot (when she isn't discussing culinary history).

When was Junko Ishii supposed to have been taken over by the demon in Noroi?

I don't... remember. Man, it's been a while since I saw it. She was overtaken during a ritual, right? Her son wasn't born yet, was he?

That's right. Somehow, I got the feeling that she was older than that particular window, but...maybe I'm fixated on what she's like when we first meet her.

I think when we meet her she's sort of transcended the possessed-girl category and entered crone/witch territory.

Thanks very much! That's some fine company to find myself in!

It's a damn fine book!

a profiler whose father turned out to be a serial killer, which naturally gives her wound-based superpowers. I've heard from women who hate this trope and women who love this trope in equal measure,

Actually that strikes me as being from the same template as Bobby Gorin and all the other male Holmesian screwed-up-genius detective characters. Is it considered a female-character cliche?

Also, I like the term "wound-based superpowers."

Oh yeah, totally Bobby Goren, IIRC--like, literally.;) But yes, the woman who gets wounded and remakes herself is often seen as a cliche, particularly in circles obsessed with "fridging"--I think I saw a chart of female superhero background motivators once that skewed very heavy indeed on the got raped/murdered relative(s)/past assault-based trauma. But then again, as you point out...so do male superheroes. Trauma's trauma.

Crankdon's fond of pointing out that the various Green Lanterns are the only DC heroes that *aren't* vigilantes compensating for some past tragedy - they're intergalactic cops (and Hal Jordan still managed to go nuts, wreck half the world, and turn into The Spectre for a while, so he's obviously got some issues too).

Which is pretty funny, considering the whole "women in refrigerators" thing traces directly back to a Green Lantern (Kyle Raynor) and his dead GF.

Although I think there is a difference, when it comes down to it, between "got wounded" and "had wounder for a father" (unless of course she was wounded by the father). I mean, the latter, technically, is trying to keep from going bad (and I think Goren exemplifies that, with the whole "understanding of serial killers/schizophrenics" thing... but I'm kind of obsessed with Criminal Intent). The former is usually trying to recover strength or achieve a fairly absolute and simple vengeance. True that they both may have to remake themselves in purity, however, depending on the nature of the wound.

In a scene I found on Youtube, Seaver (the CM character) claims she doesn't know much about the details of what her Dad did--that she just went by what little people told her, at the time. I must admit, I find that hard to believe, especially since she's had access to Bureau records. If it was me, I couldn't stop myself from picking that scab 'til it was down to the raw flesh and blood.

So would I, but that's us. Some people prefer not to look, you know. ;)

Yeah, but I can't imagine many of those people become profilers....

Let's List Again...Like We Did Last Winter...

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