I ... may need another Sanctuary icon or two

[sholio]

Now that I'm all caught up on Sanctuary (well, for certain values of "all caught up"; there are still a number of season one and two eps I haven't seen yet, and a couple from season three, but I've watched most of season three including the mid-season finale) I have some random thoughts:


1. The season three finale? LEAST SUSPENSEFUL CLIFFHANGER EVER. Seriously. But aside from that, either the writing has really picked up in season three, or my fannishness has hit the point where I'm willing to forgive the show most of its flaws in return for supplying me with generous helpings of squee. I'm slightly bummed that I have to wait all the way until April(?) for new episodes and MOAR TESLA.

2. I am not going to admit how many times I've rewatched certain scenes in "Trail of Blood". <3

3. But, my wee crush on Tesla aside, I really like the whole cast. There's nobody I don't like ... well, okay, I don't really like Druitt as a person, but I find him very entertaining to watch as a character. And I like the way the team interacts.

4. Having said that, although I like the cast overall, there's really not a character relationship that pings my id very strongly. Tesla and Magnus are about the closest thing, but I really don't see them ever being anything but awful for each other. I like their friendship, however; it smashes my buttons nicely for banter, snark and hidden affection underneath it all. I just don't really see it going anywhere good, assuming that he's serious about trying to get her into bed.

5. I feel like the show in general needs to develop the characters' relationships with each other in ways that are distinctive and unique. Maybe part of the problem is just that I've missed a number of the episodes where the cast was gelling, but I don't really have a good feeling for how, say, Henry & Will is different from Henry & Kate is different from Kate & Will. On the other team shows that I enjoy -- SGA, NCIS, etc -- one of the things I like about them (and one of the things that makes them feel "real") is that each subset of characters interacts differently depending on their personalities. On NCIS, say, McGee and Abby bond over geek stuff, and Abby and Gibbs have a father-daughter thing going, and McGee and Tony are adversarial, and Tony and Ziva flirt with each other. The way Abby talks to Tony is not the way she talks to McGee or the way she talks to Gibbs. With a few exceptions (like Helen and Tesla, or Helen and John), I don't feel like Sanctuary has a good handle on the way its characters relate to one another as individuals.

6. Poking around in a fandom that's overwhelmingly het is an interesting change from the fandoms I've been in lately, where slash or gen tends to prevail. A:tLA is mostly het where pairings are concerned, but it also has a fairly active gen fandom; Sanctuary, though, doesn't really seem to have much that isn't het. On the one hand, I think it's pretty awesome that the fandom doesn't ignore Helen (I mean, she's the main character, smart, badass, mysterious angsty past, etc., so that's what you'd expect, but, well, fandom...). But on the other hand, as a reader I'm looking for teamy adventures or hanging-around-the-Sanctuary domestic family bonding (in other words, my usual sort of thing) and not really finding much that floats my basket. I think I read all the gen in the fandom on the first day. That's not so great.

7. Is there any news on whether Sanctuary is renewed for a 4th season yet? :D

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Comments

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I often feel like that these days pairing buttons are hit a lot faster than they used to be. There are quite a few fandoms that are pairing dominate - the Haven fandom, for example. I was only able to find one gen story in that fandom, and may have spotted one slash story. Everything else was het. I find it a bit odd, I guess because I remember the days when it seemed like fandoms started out being a lot more diverse for a couple of seasons before people became settled on a certain pairing. I don't know.

I really wish SyFy would be less sporadic about when they show Sanctuary reruns. Every time I try to get into it, the schedules change and I never know when it's on. And my laptop is just as sporadic about letting me download anything :P

[sholio]

If you have Netflix, you can stream the first two seasons, assuming your computer can handle it. Hulu might have them too; you could check!

About fandom tendencies -- I don't know. My own experience has been that different fandoms tend to lean more heavily one way or another from the beginning. I'm sure that it does change over time, like you said (SGA definitely has far less long, plotty gen these days than when I first got into it) but it also starts out differently. Most of my anime fandoms were het-heavy (occasionally slash-heavy) and had very little gen; actually, one of the reasons I got into writing fanfic was because I could never find anything to my taste to read. :D It may just be that the shows which are popular right now are ones where the fandom goes for pairings, and that a gen fandom will come around again sooner or later.

... I don't know.

[palmaceae.livejournal.com]

1. I'm going to go with the writing did get a bit better and upon second viewings, suddenly episodes that I couldn't stand seemed a lot better once I got over my expectations. The fact is that the writing on the show is severely lacking at some points, and I've grown to live with it and mollify myself with fanfic.

5. I feel like the show did a better job at this in Season 1, when they had Ashley whose role was much more clearly defined than Kate's, Henry was still finding himself and only went on his first mission in "Instinct," and Will was still the new guy.

[sholio]

3. Yeah, I think it's a little of both. Rewatching early episodes, I'm finding myself less bothered by things that annoyed me the first time around, which means it's at least partly that I'm just getting used to the show's shortcomings. But I also think that season three is better in general -- it feels like the show is managing to hit its stride (such as it is *g*).

5. I think you've got a point here. All the characters' roles on the team have really started to blur and overlap. It makes sense that they'd be picking up each others' skills since there are so few of them to do everything that needs doing, but from a narrative standpoint it's making them a little less ... individual.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

1. TOTALLY NOT SUSPENSEFUL.

4. I'm aboard the fanfic John/Helen train, but I also hope it never happens on the show. Yeah. This is much the same (but for different reasons) how I feel about Helen/Tesla. I'll take it ANY DAY in (good) fic, but on the show, I want to keep the teasing banter thing going.

[sholio]

1. SERIOUSLY! WTF?

4. Hee! See, the funny thing is, I'm the opposite on John/Helen. I'm reasonably okay with the way the show handles it. It's the fanfic where I kinda get skeeved -- and I'm certainly not saying there's anything wrong with it, because my tastes are not everybody's. It's just that John/Helen as it's usually written hits way too many of my DO NOT WANTS.

Helen/Nikola sort of cracks me up because it's so much like Rodney/Sam on SGA! Poor AT, doomed to be stalked by annoying, obsessed geeks in every show in which she appears. :D (Though obviously, since she's one of the producers, it can't bother her too much!)

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Yeah--I think part of it is that I do like the way the show handles John/Helen (for the most part), and yet I'm a little more lax with fic--because it *isn't* canon. (I'd guess that more than 90% of John/Helen fic would still make me hit the back button if I started it, because it ignores some of the more complicated stuff about the pairing, or doesn't feel like them, or whatever.)