rhodrymavelyne

Once again I was late to the party. Years later I’m watching American Gods. Once again there were reasons I missed it. Not as good as my reasons for missing Hannibal, but I had them.

I’m always nervous about an adaptation of something I enjoyed. I liked the book a lot, even if I didn’t love it, reading it again and again as I did The Sandman. Bryan Fuller and Neil Gaiman putting their creative talents together seemed like something I shouldn’t miss, yet Bryan Fuller leaving made me apprehensive. I remind myself that he left Dead Like Me, yet I still loved it. This didn’t make me less apprehensive.

Falling in love with the televised adaptation of The Sandman made me decide to see if I could find clips on Youtube, see if American Gods interested me. Did they ever. Not long after I decided to buy the series on DVD.

I’m almost finished with the second season and I’m totally hooked. I was stunned to see so many people from Hannibal; not just Bryan Fuller, but Chris Byrnes, Gillian Anderson, Brian Reitzell, Johnathan Tucker, Demore Barnes, Scott Thompson, Jeremy Davies, Jesse Alexander, Adam Kane, and David Slade were all involved. Not to mention Omid Abtahi whom I’d found so compelling in the Heroes pilot, playing the lover of a djinn. Seeing Ian McShane as Mr. Wednesday made me grin, for I grew up watching Lovejoy. Along with Emily Browning as Laura Moon whom I remembered as Violet Baudelaire in A Series of Unfortunate Events. I absolutely adore Bilquis. She reminds me a little of Sylar on Heroes, journeying across America in search of victims, err, worshippers. He collected powers, she collected passions. At the same time she could be so loving, so utterly sympathetic.

All of the characters have been multifaceted, even the unsympathetic ones. I’m almost at the end of Season 2. I’m curious what’s going to happen next. I have some idea of what’s coming, yet there has been so many surprises.

The very concept of gods, how powerful they become, depending on how much they are worshipped is something I’ve played with in my own writing. It’s fun to speculate in fanfiction about how powerful pairings can become when people believe in them, spend a lot of time writing about them, drawing them, investing more than a little of their heart into them. Can worshippers create their own deity without even realizing it? Or can they consciously craft a god to act according to their will and wishes?

Either could be terrifying and wondrous. The deities we create can be uplifting or repulsive. Perhaps both at the same time. They can empower the ugliest parts of ourselves or the most beautiful.

It’s something I’ve wondered about in real life, the blind faith we can put in those we worship. It’s a theme I’ve returned to again and again.

Interesting to see in this series the old gods striking back, trying to take a stand against the newcomers. Or adapt and join them.

Like I said, I’m curious what will happen next.

My older DVDs/BluRays have been a great comfort while shut it. I’ve been watching some of my favorites, noticing things about them I hadn’t caught before. For instance, Tim Minear, one of the Powers That Be, so to speak, for both Angel and Wonderfalls wrote some of the episodes I enjoyed the most on Angel; Somnambulist, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? and Darla. He mentioned a lot of film influences he brought to bear in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?, one of which I believe was Stanley Kubrick. This was very interesting because both Bryan Fuller and Jeff Davis acknowledge Kubrick as a source of inspiration for certain scenes in Hannibal and Teen Wolf.

Look like I’m not the only one who enjoys a flight of fanciful fandom, not that I thought I was alone. What impresses and inspires me about the above artists is they’ve shown that you can be successful doing this.

I’ve always been fascinated by how new life can be breathed into existing works of art by allowing them to influence fresh creations. It’s different from copying them. Wonderfalls, Angel, Hannibal, and Teen Wolf ae all unique series in their own right, yet I can see other influences in the imagery and words. Sometimes it’s a very subtle thing, because the creator brings their own vision, their influences to pot to simmer and bubble with what once influenced them, creating a unique stew.

I remember a moment which in Wonderfalls, which struck me as very Twin Peaks in Wax Lion, the very first episode. Karen Tyler was sitting in her sister’s trailer with a red backdrop behind her, wearing a black dress, smoking. This reminded me so much of Dale Cooper’s dream of Laura Palmer in the red room, aided by the fact that Jaye went to Karen and hugged her, the two of them reminding me a lot of Donna and Laura. Was this a deliberate homage? I don’t know, although Bryan Fuller appears to like Twin Peaks and has mentioned it during commentaries. (Hannibal, not Wonderfalls. Will Graham on Hannibal also reminds me a lot of Laura Palmer in being gifted, damned, possessing a divided heart which creates a nightmare existence in his own life and on several occassions choosing to let himself be killed.) How much of this is simply what I’m seeing? I’m not the only X-Files fan who thought of Twin Peaks in a surreal episode where Mulder ate piece after piece of pie, but the creators cited something else entirely as the influence.

Sometimes it feels like film and television is creating its own mythology, its own vision, which every image adds to. The ones that attract me draw me into an emotional core, which affects the characters as well as the setting, blending them together. The landscape becomes part of the emotional journey, their current state of mind. The truer everything is to that state, the happier I am. The more everyone veers away from such a core or ignores it, the more frustrated I get. It’s a lot easier to spot the characters and the setting veering off if I’m a fan watching than if I’m doing the writing myself. Problems become a lot more visible when I have the leisure to spot them than when I’m racing to meet a madcap schedule. Is fanfic easier than original stories? I’m not sure. I’m not dealing with deadlines in fanfic, although I get anxious about readers getting anxious themselves, waiting for the next part of an ongoing work. They’ve waited a long time for certain series while I’ve been distracted or caught up in my orginal projects. If I think about that, I’ll panick and falter. How many other people have panicked? The vision of the successes that inspired us, they can be a guiding light in the middle of the panic and the worry. I find they soothe me, get me thinking about the elements I savoured in them, why do I savour them? How can I use them to inspire myself? Absorbing the rush of creativity such works provide is one of my greatest pleasures as a viewer. The trick is figuring out how to channel that rush into works of my own.

Fanfic has been a welcome outlet for the passion I feel when I fall in love with a series so much, I can’t let it go. I want it to continue, to find new life in a story, a character interaction that I long to explore. I also want to create my own stories, though, using elements in the series I’ve loved to shape my own tales.

It’s difficult. It requires constant work, but it’s work that satisfies me like no other.

There’s so much I discovered while watching Hannibal, not the least Bryan Fuller himself. I wasn’t completely unaware of him. My husband was a big Pushing Daisies fan while we both avidly watched Heroes. I was completely unaware that Wonderfalls existed until Bryan Fuller talked about meeting Caroline Dhavernas during that project in a Hannibal commentary. I didn’t know about Dead Like Me either. Curious I looked for both shows online and wondered how I managed to miss them. (I now have both.)

Now my imagination is in Bryan Fuller crossover wonderland. I’m thinking of ways Jaye Tyler and George Lass could meet. I’m wondering if Reggie is really Miriam Lass or if something happened to Reggie and/or Miriam for Miriam to take on her name. I’m picturing an alternate reality in the Pie Hole where Will Graham and Abigail Hobbs persuade Hannibal Lecter to go out for pie, hoping to get him to eat something other than people, only to have Ned stop by the table and recognize Will from the nightmarish school for boys they both attended. (It might have happened, even if Will is a lot younger than Ned.) I’m picturing Ned bumping into Aaron Tyler on his way to the restroom in the Pie Hole. Ned recoils at the sight of someone who looks so much like himself while Aaron winks and says, “Hey, handsome.” (Both characters are played by Lee Pace.) I’m imagining Hannibal being told by the narrator of Pushing Daisies or George Lass summarizing the events of Hannibal in a sardonic way, explaining how she met a beautiful, sensitive young man on a job, only to fall afoul of his psychotic, possessive psychiatrist. I’m picturing George escorting Hannibal to a beautiful, dark and hellish garden, filled with dangerous beasts and poisonous flowers that’s his afterlife. She turns to Will, tries to tell Will he doesn’t have to go to this afterlife. Will thanks her, but says he’s going with Hannibal. The two of them walk hand in hand into hell together while George watches them go, contemplating a love that would reject the lights of the afterlife to be with someone else. Another scenario is the Darling Mermaid duo talking to Hannibal, asking when he’s going to introduce them to her husband. Lily tells him that he doesn’t have to hide Will away, they’re not that conservative. Hannibal smiles and says that Will is still recovering from a bad fall and the emotional turmoil that led up to it. I’ve pictured all of the protagonists of the various Fuller shows on a game show or talk show. Jaye mentions how she would have been institutionalized if Wonderfalls had continued. Ned says he has been thrown into jail, if not institutionalized. George says she could imagine being institutionalized, given time. All of them look at Will Graham and hold up a placard that reads, “Thanks for taking one for the team, Will!”

I’ve pictured these scenarios and many more ridiculous along with less ridiculous. I think of how Gretchen Speck, whom appeared on Wonderfalls appeared on Hannibal. Did Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller get a cameo on American Gods or anything else? It would be nice to see them again in some other Fuller-universe.

I’m going to have to check out American Gods and everything Bryan Fuller has done up until now. I’m very grateful so much of his work is available on DVD. I didn’t miss him completely. At the same time, I’m wondering about the market, how viewers are bombarded with images of certain TV shows, certain movies, yet others manage to glide under the radar.

Here’s where I could really use a flight of fanciful fandom, in figuring out how to let people know what’s out there, so we don’t miss these great series when they’re happening. Too many of them get cancelled or quit too soon. Too many of them are never acknowledged at all.

Keywords may be a key. Images that catch the eye, which communicate more than simply a genre, that something transcends a genre may be helpful in spreading the word. As it is, the most useful tool is word of the mouth, mentioning your other projects in whatever works are out there. This lets potential customers know you’re out there.

We’re out there. We’re waiting, viewers who enjoy elegant horror, intelligent acting, and stories that transcend categorization.

I hope with all my heart that we’ll connect.