![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Expanse!!
So I am FINALLY watching The Expanse. I'm up to 4x06 (PLEASE DO NOT SPOIL ME FOR THE REST OF SEASON FOUR, even vaguely) and I'm only posting about it now because I have to talk about my trash panda princess.
DRUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are not enough exclamation points in the world for how much I love Drummer. And her friendship with Naomi. And her frenemyship with Ashford. (Who I sadly suspect is probably going to die this season. DO NOT TELL ME.) And just her everything.
Drummer really snuck up on me, too. I was sort of vaguely aware of her earlier, but I don't even remember if she was around in season one. As of season two I went from being DRUMMER WHOMST to thinking that she was developing a nice little friendship with Naomi, which appeared to blow completely apart a couple of episodes later. I hoped we'd see more of her, but by the end of the season I was kind of just meh on the whole thing.
And then season three and the Behemoth and the Drummer & Ashford show and her emotionally repressed loyalty to Naomi all slammed into my id like a ton of bricks. Strangely enough I haven't really found myself that taken with the Roci and her crew - I mean, I LIKE them, I find them generally interesting and fun to watch, and the show overall is gorgeous and unique and rich enough in worldbuilding to keep me interested even when my favorites aren't onscreen. With the Roci, generally, I kept feeling like I was being found-family-baited; they talk about it but they don't really show it, until a little more in season three and four. But even with the characters talking about how much they care about each other, you don't really get the feeling that they're as ride or die for each other as they claim to be; they're always choosing other people and other priorities. I guess that I feel it a bit more in season four, but it doesn't really hit me in the gut the way I was expecting.
DRUMMER THO!!!
She crushed herself with a freight hauler to save the life of a guy she couldn't stand, because she was in a position to free him (and save the ship) and otherwise they were just both going to die there. She drags herself into the Behemoth reactor with a broken back just to keep Naomi from self-sacrificing on the altar of Holden. She tracked down and captured the guy who broke Naomi's heart to find out where Naomi's baby is! She is basically John McClane in a tiny breakable-looking woman with truly questionable taste in eye makeup (I have been telling Orion that she must go through the Behemoth/Medina Station's entire supply of mascara in about a week).
Allow me to present to you this gifset of Drummer and Naomi making hearteyes at each other. I can't really go looking for gifs yet because of spoilers, so I will just live inside this one for now, thx.
There are some characters I keep wishing would stay on the Roci permanently, like Bobbie (though her long-distance friendship with Alex is super cute), but I don't feel that way about Drummer because she is exactly where she wants and needs to be, fighting for her people and building a better future for them. Apparently the actress who plays her, Cara Gee, is Ojibwe! I found a neat interview where she talks about how being indigenous informs her portrayal of Drummer, playing a sci-fi character whose people are oppressed by a colonial government and have to fight for the basic necessities they need to survive.
I was absolutely positive she was going to die at multiple points in season three (especially the finale thing with the grenades; Naomi's elevator save was the best thing ever), but at this point I'm fairly confident she survives season four, and if Drummer does not get the happy ending she deserves in the rest of the show, I will riot. ngl, I ship Drummer/Naomi way more than any of the canon ships, but I also love that Drummer doesn't circle around a romance. She's not unhappy or incomplete without it. Drummer is Drummer, and she's a fucked-up mess in some ways, like all Belters are, but she is also perfectly complete just being who she is: captain of the Behemoth, leader of Medina Station, Ashford's frenemesis, and general all-around badass.
DRUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are not enough exclamation points in the world for how much I love Drummer. And her friendship with Naomi. And her frenemyship with Ashford. (Who I sadly suspect is probably going to die this season. DO NOT TELL ME.) And just her everything.
Drummer really snuck up on me, too. I was sort of vaguely aware of her earlier, but I don't even remember if she was around in season one. As of season two I went from being DRUMMER WHOMST to thinking that she was developing a nice little friendship with Naomi, which appeared to blow completely apart a couple of episodes later. I hoped we'd see more of her, but by the end of the season I was kind of just meh on the whole thing.
And then season three and the Behemoth and the Drummer & Ashford show and her emotionally repressed loyalty to Naomi all slammed into my id like a ton of bricks. Strangely enough I haven't really found myself that taken with the Roci and her crew - I mean, I LIKE them, I find them generally interesting and fun to watch, and the show overall is gorgeous and unique and rich enough in worldbuilding to keep me interested even when my favorites aren't onscreen. With the Roci, generally, I kept feeling like I was being found-family-baited; they talk about it but they don't really show it, until a little more in season three and four. But even with the characters talking about how much they care about each other, you don't really get the feeling that they're as ride or die for each other as they claim to be; they're always choosing other people and other priorities. I guess that I feel it a bit more in season four, but it doesn't really hit me in the gut the way I was expecting.
DRUMMER THO!!!
She crushed herself with a freight hauler to save the life of a guy she couldn't stand, because she was in a position to free him (and save the ship) and otherwise they were just both going to die there. She drags herself into the Behemoth reactor with a broken back just to keep Naomi from self-sacrificing on the altar of Holden. She tracked down and captured the guy who broke Naomi's heart to find out where Naomi's baby is! She is basically John McClane in a tiny breakable-looking woman with truly questionable taste in eye makeup (I have been telling Orion that she must go through the Behemoth/Medina Station's entire supply of mascara in about a week).
Allow me to present to you this gifset of Drummer and Naomi making hearteyes at each other. I can't really go looking for gifs yet because of spoilers, so I will just live inside this one for now, thx.
There are some characters I keep wishing would stay on the Roci permanently, like Bobbie (though her long-distance friendship with Alex is super cute), but I don't feel that way about Drummer because she is exactly where she wants and needs to be, fighting for her people and building a better future for them. Apparently the actress who plays her, Cara Gee, is Ojibwe! I found a neat interview where she talks about how being indigenous informs her portrayal of Drummer, playing a sci-fi character whose people are oppressed by a colonial government and have to fight for the basic necessities they need to survive.
I was absolutely positive she was going to die at multiple points in season three (especially the finale thing with the grenades; Naomi's elevator save was the best thing ever), but at this point I'm fairly confident she survives season four, and if Drummer does not get the happy ending she deserves in the rest of the show, I will riot. ngl, I ship Drummer/Naomi way more than any of the canon ships, but I also love that Drummer doesn't circle around a romance. She's not unhappy or incomplete without it. Drummer is Drummer, and she's a fucked-up mess in some ways, like all Belters are, but she is also perfectly complete just being who she is: captain of the Behemoth, leader of Medina Station, Ashford's frenemesis, and general all-around badass.
no subject
Fine, my attention is piqued. Even if that is indeed some heinous eyeliner as demonstrated by the linked gifset. I hope she survives and gets a happy ending, because every now and then a character one likes should.
no subject
And also, it's just bonkers, in the best way. At one point Drummer and her group (for plot reasons) steal a generation ship that was built by Mormons to Mormonize the galaxy, so there are a number of important and emotionally heavy scenes that take place on the bridge of this ship where the walls are all covered with giant, softly lit, romantic 19th-century-style paintings of horses and wagons, farms and mountains, and Mormons colonizing Utah. It has realistic spaceships in a way that I'm not used to seeing on TV - spin gravity only, lots of zero-gee scenes (the show uses magnetic boots to avoid the characters always floating everywhere, but there's still a lot of wirework), and omnidirectional spaceships that are covered in maneuvering jets for direction changes.
It feels very much like classic 70s/80s sci-fi to me. It's a little bit difficult to even quite put my finger on exactly what is different about it from most TV sci-fi, but maybe part of it is that it's not afraid to let the audience figure things out for themselves. The characters very rarely technobabble at each other, there's a lot of non-obvious physics stuff that is only depicted visually (like things falling in a curving pattern on space stations because of the relatively small radius and heightened Coriolis effect), and in general, it's a show you can really sink into.
no subject
The show first got onto my radar because of the casting of the role of Bobbie Draper, so I believe it.
It feels very much like classic 70s/80s sci-fi to me.
I know it's set in our mid-future solar system, but descriptions of this show keep making me think of Joan D. Vinge's Heaven Chronicles (1991), whose component novellas were written respectively in 1978 and 1980. I acknowledge it might just be the asteroid belt doing it.
there's a lot of non-obvious physics stuff that is only depicted visually (like things falling in a curving pattern on space stations because of the relatively small radius and heightened Coriolis effect)
That's very nice. Also the generation ship straight out of Orson Scott Card.
no subject
YES.
(I didn't read the post because it will be too spoilerly for S4 but I read this comment because yeah, this is precisely the thing I liked best about this show in the seasons I did watch)
no subject
I ship Drummer/Naomi way more than any of the canon ships
Me too, though I think it *is* canon. At least, I'm pretty sure that it was canon during the time Naomi was on the Behemoth.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Cara Gee is a total cutie pie in RL, bubbly and funny and sweet. It's amazing to watch her become Drummer. She's an activist and just an interesting person all around, and I don't often say that about actors.
no subject
no subject
I really love it when characters sneak up on me like that. I didn't expect to care, and then I didn't expect her to become a main character, so it's all just been delightful.
no subject
I love Bobbi and Naomi and Chrisjen SO MUCH, but OMFG, DRUMMER.
no subject
no subject
no subject
a lot of the things I love most about the show are more about overarching storyline meaning than specific character moment focused.
Yeah, same - so far, this show isn't really giving me fanfic feelings; it's not engaging me in that particular way. But the general storylines and the worldbuilding and the believably diverse future and all of that are just great. It's very absorbing and twisty and fun.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject