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Yes, IWTV is great! While waiting for the next season, might you consider Evil? The show follows a hot Catholic priest-in-training, the hot atheist shrink to whom he is desperately attracted, and their hot lapsed Muslim tech guy as they investigate and try to prove/disprove demonic possessions. It is incredibly, delightfully unhinged. Part of it is that the show started on network TV, then moved to streaming in its second season, leading to the absolute best evolution where characters who were reasonably well-behaved start spouting "fuck" at the drop of a hat in S2, including a delightful nearly silent episode that was actually filmed while they still thought they'd be on network, so after filming they replaced the "thought dialogue" onscreen that the actor thought he was filming with a stream of "fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck," to hilarious effect. There's body horror, Catholic guilt, an amazingly toxic mother (Christine Lahti, having the time of her life), four kids who have clearly been instructed to just yammer every time they are on screen together--making them more realistic than 80% of TV kids from the get-go--examination of misogyny and anti-Blackness, critiques of modern internet culture, and the occasional Wallace Shawn. Also, the tech guy is Aasif Mandvi and the hot priest is Mike Colter (Jessica Jones/Luke Cage). And the bad guy is Michael Emerson (Harold Finch), chewing scenery like he only gets paid by how much debris is left when he’s done.
Shorter rec: What if Hannibal and The X-Files had a deeply online baby? My one caveat is that this is a cynical show, which feels a little like watching Cabaret: It's a sick culture and the show is not interested in fixing it, only in displaying it pinned open on a table so we can poke at the nastiest parts.
Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays: The editing on this one is much, much better than that of Camp Damascus, but it’s still a queer, gory horror novel that insists on the necessity of queer joy amidst horror. Misha is a moderately successful Hollywood writer finally up for an Oscar, for short animated film. Then, after he refuses to kill off his lesbian characters, figures from the horror films he’s written start stalking him, his best friend, and his boyfriend. I find conversion camp inherently scarier than scary movies, but I look forward to what’s next.
R. A. Sinn, A Second Chance for Yesterday: Do I not like time travel romances because of their determinism? Perhaps that’s the core of the problem. Neve, who’s escaped a fundamentalist upbringing to become a wealthy coder in San Francisco, which remains relatively untouched by the climate apocalypse except for all the refugees, is about to introduce the newest version of her company’s Save Point technology. Save Point lets you jump back 5 seconds in time to fix problems that can be fixed in 5 seconds (which doesn’t really seem like a lot of problems, but ok), but really it’s a datamining technology. The next iteration is supposed to be even better, but a glitch instead sends Neve living backwards: each morning, she wakes up one day further into the past. Fortunately, futurepast Neve has found a hacker to help her try to fix the problem; she falls in love with them as they progressively lose their connection to her—because they’re still living forwards like everyone else. Neve has to manage the logic problems that ensue and try to save the 115 million users of the technology from her fate; I really wasn’t into the resolution she comes to with her fundamentalist mother or the hacker romance, so I wasn’t the right audience.
Joy Demorra, Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites: Fluff and Fangs Edition: A werewolf badly hurt in a dumb war moves to an island ruled by vampires, where he falls for the vampire scion—a talented scientist who’s been ground down by his own father’s abuse. If you like really anachronistic psychological states (trains are just coming into use but the werewolf knows all about safewords and aftercare as well as non-sexual attitudes that are more typically associated in the West with today’s Western mores), then you might enjoy this, including the potential m/m/f threesome with the hot fae who brings her own problems to the duo. My daughter really enjoyed it and found the writing funny, although it wasn’t to my taste.
Stephen King, You Like It Darker: Stories: King is still doing exactly what he does: bad supernatural things happen to Americans for unexplained reasons and they have to deal. The one standout story is about a man who randomly dreams about where a murder victim is located, and then has to deal with the fact that his reporting of the body makes him the number one suspect.
Austin Grossman, Fight Me: Aging superheroes/supervillains reunite to deal with the potential return of Sinistro, who they killed but who could also travel through time. Some witty use of the standard tropes. E.g.: “ ‘Jack would never do something like this.’
‘Jack tried to sell the Earth to interdimensional bees.’
‘I feel like that was different,’ I say.”
Later, addressing Jack: “‘I can’t believe you’re the one who still has fans. I saved school buses full of children! You stole the Golden Gate Bridge!’” Also: “Half the time there’s never a clear explanation. You collect the thanks of a grateful nation, sure, but you’re left thinking: Who was that guy? What was he trying to do? What were all those hats about?”
The ultimate story was a bit dissatisfying, which I think was the intended effect, since it’s about the impossibility of expecting neat endings from a world that actually does go on, with and without specific people.
Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Oracle: This is both a sequel to a book I haven’t read and a transformative work, since it uses an Old God made up by Neil Gaiman (with his permission, says an author’s note) to tell a very different story; FWIW I had no problem reading references to the previous book as pure backstory for one character. It’s a horror novel: an ancient sailing ship is found in a field of flowers. Anyone who goes in the hatch just … disappears. The government covers it up, with Stephen King-like actions. And then the disappeared start to return, which is worse. One kid, whose father was one of the first lost, may be the only one who can do anything about it. I found it effective, as the King reference should indicate.
Shorter rec: What if Hannibal and The X-Files had a deeply online baby? My one caveat is that this is a cynical show, which feels a little like watching Cabaret: It's a sick culture and the show is not interested in fixing it, only in displaying it pinned open on a table so we can poke at the nastiest parts.
Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays: The editing on this one is much, much better than that of Camp Damascus, but it’s still a queer, gory horror novel that insists on the necessity of queer joy amidst horror. Misha is a moderately successful Hollywood writer finally up for an Oscar, for short animated film. Then, after he refuses to kill off his lesbian characters, figures from the horror films he’s written start stalking him, his best friend, and his boyfriend. I find conversion camp inherently scarier than scary movies, but I look forward to what’s next.
R. A. Sinn, A Second Chance for Yesterday: Do I not like time travel romances because of their determinism? Perhaps that’s the core of the problem. Neve, who’s escaped a fundamentalist upbringing to become a wealthy coder in San Francisco, which remains relatively untouched by the climate apocalypse except for all the refugees, is about to introduce the newest version of her company’s Save Point technology. Save Point lets you jump back 5 seconds in time to fix problems that can be fixed in 5 seconds (which doesn’t really seem like a lot of problems, but ok), but really it’s a datamining technology. The next iteration is supposed to be even better, but a glitch instead sends Neve living backwards: each morning, she wakes up one day further into the past. Fortunately, futurepast Neve has found a hacker to help her try to fix the problem; she falls in love with them as they progressively lose their connection to her—because they’re still living forwards like everyone else. Neve has to manage the logic problems that ensue and try to save the 115 million users of the technology from her fate; I really wasn’t into the resolution she comes to with her fundamentalist mother or the hacker romance, so I wasn’t the right audience.
Joy Demorra, Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites: Fluff and Fangs Edition: A werewolf badly hurt in a dumb war moves to an island ruled by vampires, where he falls for the vampire scion—a talented scientist who’s been ground down by his own father’s abuse. If you like really anachronistic psychological states (trains are just coming into use but the werewolf knows all about safewords and aftercare as well as non-sexual attitudes that are more typically associated in the West with today’s Western mores), then you might enjoy this, including the potential m/m/f threesome with the hot fae who brings her own problems to the duo. My daughter really enjoyed it and found the writing funny, although it wasn’t to my taste.
Stephen King, You Like It Darker: Stories: King is still doing exactly what he does: bad supernatural things happen to Americans for unexplained reasons and they have to deal. The one standout story is about a man who randomly dreams about where a murder victim is located, and then has to deal with the fact that his reporting of the body makes him the number one suspect.
Austin Grossman, Fight Me: Aging superheroes/supervillains reunite to deal with the potential return of Sinistro, who they killed but who could also travel through time. Some witty use of the standard tropes. E.g.: “ ‘Jack would never do something like this.’
‘Jack tried to sell the Earth to interdimensional bees.’
‘I feel like that was different,’ I say.”
Later, addressing Jack: “‘I can’t believe you’re the one who still has fans. I saved school buses full of children! You stole the Golden Gate Bridge!’” Also: “Half the time there’s never a clear explanation. You collect the thanks of a grateful nation, sure, but you’re left thinking: Who was that guy? What was he trying to do? What were all those hats about?”
The ultimate story was a bit dissatisfying, which I think was the intended effect, since it’s about the impossibility of expecting neat endings from a world that actually does go on, with and without specific people.
Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Oracle: This is both a sequel to a book I haven’t read and a transformative work, since it uses an Old God made up by Neil Gaiman (with his permission, says an author’s note) to tell a very different story; FWIW I had no problem reading references to the previous book as pure backstory for one character. It’s a horror novel: an ancient sailing ship is found in a field of flowers. Anyone who goes in the hatch just … disappears. The government covers it up, with Stephen King-like actions. And then the disappeared start to return, which is worse. One kid, whose father was one of the first lost, may be the only one who can do anything about it. I found it effective, as the King reference should indicate.
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