rhodrymavelyne | Entries tagged with wonderfalls

One of the few places I’ve managed to distract myself from this epidemic is in front of the television, playing old favorite series on TV/BluRay, often mingling with new ones. New, however, is relative. I often discover a series years after it’s gone off the air. Somehow I missed both Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls when they were airing. This may have been my fault. I was utterly obsessed with The Keep (a private yaoi fantasy interactive writing/roleplaying game I was involved with) around that time. Or was I? I may have been in the thrall of passion for Yami no Matsuei/Descendants of Darkness or Tokyo Babylon, discoveries at my first YaoiCon. Or I may have been too burnt out on the double-standard on western television, the tendency to always pair up male and female characters if they had the slightest chemistry (or no chemistry) while disregarding or trying to deny powerful chemistry between male or female characters, often with a contrived romantic interest of the opposite gender. I wasn’t feeling very enthusiastic about any new shows on TV out of my growing disillusionment with this. The result was I didn’t catch Dead Like Me or Wonderfalls while they were airing. I discovered Wonderfalls years later when Bryan Fuller mentioned it during the commentary of Hannibal Season 1: Apertíf. I tracked the first episode down on Youtube and watched it with my husband. We decided to buy it. Being intrigued by all things Bryan Fuller, I watched the pilot of Dead Like Me, too. I asked my husband to get it for me for my birthday. Dead Like Me wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before while Wonderfalls had a certain wacky weirdness that reminded me of Twin Peaks, yet with its own unique characters and mood. (It turns out Todd Holland, the co-creator of Wonderfalls directed some of my favorite episodes of Twin Peaks.) Jaye Tyler was an intriguing lead character, a deliberate anti-social whose life style is challenged by her new ability. As for George Lass, I fell in love with George’s punky snarkiness which hides a surprisingly soft heart and philosophical mind. I enjoyed how both series mingled the supernatural with the everyday or common human themes.

I wanted to write a Wonderfalls/Dead Like Me crossover. I wanted Jaye and George to meet, but none of the ideas I had interested me enough to pour my energy into a fanfic. It wasn’t until lockdown, watching a lot of old favorites to escape from my own frustration and fear, that a plot idea finally grabbed me.

I’ve already started an ongoing fanfic called Sisterhood of the Witchblade, inspired by similaries I saw between Sara Pezzini, the lead character of Witchblade (Yancy Butler’s depiction on the TV show) and Kate Lockley, a very interesting character on Angel who disappeared after the second season. Drawing Kate into this sisterhood seemed like an intriguing direction to take her character, especially after her old life in Los Angeles as a cop came to an end, along with a way to empower her. Giving Sara Pezzini another little sister, one more like herself, seemed like a compelling emotional connection in her life. Most of the others Sara has on the TV show are with men, not that those bonds arent’ compelling, but this might be give her something different. Linking them both to the Witchblade offered an opportunity to write something surreal and dreamlike which really appealed to me. (I wrote a past Flight of Fanciful Fandom about this idea).

I couldn’t get farther from the mood of Witchblade than Jaye Tyler’s life as a retail clerk or even George Lass’s often mundane afterlife as a Grim Reaper and a Happy Time employee. Yet all of these shows; Witchblade, Angel (when Kate was there), Wonderfalls, and Dead Like Me were around the same time period. Ellen Muth, who played George, reminded me a little of Yancy Butler. Jaye Tyler’s concept of hearing voices was inspired by Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc was once a wielder of the Witchblade. What if George, her sister, Reggie, and Jaye were all part of the Sisterhood of the Witchblade, only with different roles to play than the wielder? The Witchblade weaves a web, to quote Dominique Bouchier. What if it’s drawing all of these women together, arranging for them to meet? What if the Witchblade is connected to the same power that allows Jaye to hear the voices of wax lions, metal monkeys, and other animal renditions with a mouth? The way those voices speak to Jaye are vastly different than those Sara hears. The moods of both Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me are vastly different than Witchblade or Angel. Bringing these universes together is going to be quite a challenge. Perhaps the contrast itself is the key, the way Sara and Kate’s existences differ from Jaye and George’s. Besides I doubt either Rube or Death, George’s current employers are going to happy about another higher power drawing her into a web.

No, it’s not going to be easy, but I think it’ll add complexity to Sisterhood of the Witchblade, not to mention giving it focus and direction. I am, after all, writing about a sisterhood. Why shouldn’t it have more than two sisters, even if they’re not literal sisters?

Yes, it’s going to be challenging, but it should be rewarding.

Wish me luck.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: South Bay, CA
Current Music: Enjoy the Silence, by Lacuna Coil

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.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: South Bay, CA
Current Music: Bloodfest, by Brian Reitzell

Grounded, trapped within my house, my imagination flutters about, wanting to soar free. It often takes refuge in fannish thoughts, hiding within them. I return to old loves, old fandoms, allowing them to mingle with more recent ones.

What if Jaye Tyler from Wonderfalls and George Lass from Dead Like Me crossed paths, causing a commotion, to quote an old Madonna song? What if the muses and the gravelings were at odds and got into a major swear-off? Jaye and George might end up exchanging long suffering glances at the end of it all, no matter how much their colleagues pitted them against each other.

What if the gravelings from Dead Like Me formed a swooning fandom around Hannibal Lecter from Hannibal? They might hang around his kitchen, mooning over him, melodramtic operatic love numbers playing in the background. After all, Hannibal makes their job much easier. They don’t have to drop a piano on him, or do anything with a serial killer like him. They can just kick back and watch him create what may well appear to many of them as majestic artworks of death. By the same token, the gravelings may hate Ned, the pie maker from Pushing Daisies, because Ned and his magic finger really screw up their schedules. They can’t actually harm Ned, though, because he’s somehow immune to their antics. For what if Ned’s father was one of the few Grim Reapers who managed to reproduce, fathering three sons? The effort might have aged him. Perhaps Dwight Dixon and Charles Charles knew some of his secrets? There might have been other reasons Chuck’s father wanted Chuck to stay away from Ned other than the obvious.

Speaking of the obvious, it’s fairly obvious to want to connect George and Reggie Lass to Miriam, but what if they were also related to Sara Pezzini, Kate Lockley, and the bloodline of the Witchblade? What if they were all members of the Sisterhood of the Witchblade, only some members of this warrior bloodline choose other battlefields and other weapons? Some of them might not even choose weapons. It’s irresistible, adding Jaye Tyler to this bloodline since her concept of ‘hearing voices’ was inspired by Joan of Arc, whom was a past Witchblade wielder. Not to mention the more I learn about Lucrezia Borgia, the more I want to tweak the part she played on Witchblade. I thought of a way to do that with Kate doing a little deductive reasoning and research, perhaps with the help of Alex Moreau from Poltergeist: The Legacy?

In the meantime on the Hannibal front, I’ve got all sorts of wild ideas of how Will and Hannibal might have escaped from death, from a very intricate scheme involving Chiyo to vampirism. Hannibal Lecter, however, might well have been one of the few men offered eternal life by a vampire who turned it down. According to Hannibal, death gives life meaning. Making life eternal might render it meaningless. How much might this principle be challenged by the threat of not losing his own life, but losing Will’s?

These are just some of the ideas swimming around in my head. Tell me, dear reader and/or fanfic writer, what are some of yours?

Current Mood: anxious
Current Location: South Bay, CA
Current Music: Priscilla, by Suzanne Vega

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.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: South Bay, CA
Current Music: Love Crime, by Siouxsie Sioux and Brian Reitzell