Suffering in Narrative, and other thoughts

(this post is mostly spoiler-free; just some vague generalizations of character arcs)

If it wasn't already immediately, startlingly clear, I spend a lot of time thinking about characters and characterization. I do it almost exclusively for television shows, and then only for select characters, and when I look back on the ones I'm both drawn toward and do the most thinking about, it seems that I can draw one common line between all of them: they've suffered a lot, both in their backstory and a decent portion of their screentime.

I used to think this meant I was a horrible person, that I was some sort of closet sociopath using fictional characters as a proxy for squirrels and small animals. It didn't help that on fan communities, I seemed to be in the high minority, obsessed with the dark and the melancholy, continually dragging my most favorite characters through live coals as everyone else discussed UST and their theories for how and where and why the leads would finally get together (and how many times). At first I pretended to live in the shipper camp, but I rapidly ended up dropping all pretense, finding myself annoyed at how flat and domestic and boring my favorite characters were in those contexts. I never could (and still can't) figure out the appeal of turning canonically strong, independent, workaholic women into pregnant mothers who've quit their jobs to move to a suburb and advise their ironically named daughters on teen crushes while still managing to have vast amounts of sex with their OTP partner at every viable opportunity. To this day, I wonder why people like this watch the same shows I watch when, clearly, all they really want to be watching is a mash-up of General Hospital and The Brady Bunch.

I don't necessarily want to make the claim that my perception of characters is the only valid one, that the enjoyment that shippers and fannits take from shows is any less than what I get. I have the same tendency to reduce characters to the roles I find most engaging, and while I may have convinced myself that my interpretations are true to character, I can't deny that I will always decide to have my leads haunted by memories both fresh and long scabbed over, that I will see them in isolation, spiraling down a path of self-destruction and reckless disregard. But I at least have an excuse -- I specifically seek out characters who are prone to this sort of behavior. It's for this reason that it disturbs me all the more when I see them slutshamed, flattened into the role of housewife and mother, and made apathetic toward both their destiny and their past. I've found this activity in every fandom I've ever visited, no matter how brief the duration of my visit, and this is the primary reason I now avoid it to the best of my ability, despite how desperately I wish I could participate. What sucks the most about my self-imposed isolation is that I'm sure there are plenty of fans who are like me, but I'll never find them because they don't coalesce, because they're all avoiding fandom for the same reasons I am.

At any rate, I'll lay my opinions on fandom to rest (for the moment, anyway). I'm more interested in discussing why suffering can be, to me, the purest, bluest meth of narrative devices.

I'll first say that it's not necessarily the suffering itself, that my focus isn't on the event which brought about misery. I still can't watch episodes like "The Body" and "Seeing Red" (Buffy) or "Momento Mori" and "Redux" (X-Files) more than maybe once a year. While the event itself is important, I don't necessarily enjoy revisiting it, because while I enjoy my character writhing in a state of agony and anguish, I don't like seeing them in that much pain, at least not regularly.

Additionally, it's not just suffering for the sake of suffering. This is why I've never invested with characters in post-apocalyptic situations (in movies, books, or television), and this is why while I'll watch Walking Dead, I'll never connect with it. I have the same opinion of Breaking Bad -- I watch and enjoy it, but the suffering in that show doesn't speak to me or cause me to think about it. It's not that I couldn't over-analyze the hell out of it, since the characters are more than fleshed out enough; I just have no desire to do so. I considered the possibility that it's because I don't connect to shows which lack strong female presence, but I find it ridiculously easy to kill several hours turning Sherlock over and over, so that theory is out. It's not the "gritty" nature of the shows either. I always tend to think of characters under bleak lights anyway. It's also not because I refuse to connect with characters who don't have Plot Armor. If that were the case, I wouldn't like Game of Thrones (though, I don't spend any time angsting over that series' characters either, or, at least, I stopped doing so by the end of book 2, because there was zero point), or anything Joss Whedon* does (why, Joss, whyyyyyyy?). So what then?

The answer becomes clearer when I think about my top five list, the criteria for which are fairly simple: spent an uncountable amount of hours sitting around thinking about the minutia of these characters lives, before, between, and after canon; at least attempted exploratory fiction on these characters' backstories; sought fanfiction specifically oriented toward fleshing out these characters (with varying success); bothered to angst over their position on the list; and wondered at their cooperative role in the zombie apocalypse (since, as I stated previously, this list doubles as my Zombie Apocalypse Dream Team). There are other characters I've done this for, but none to the degree of these five, which is what's earned them their (fairly cemented) positions.

1. Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) - I don't even know how to begin to approach my love for Buffy. I don't even think I can. What I can say is she's by far the most complex, interesting character I've ever had the utmost pleasure of considering, both in her own context and her relationship with other characters. I can never spare enough thoughts for her, can never watch an episode without folding it into her greater arc. The depths of her grief and the heights of her triumphs are unparalleled. If Buffy was the only show I could watch for the rest of my life, I'd die satisfied anyway.
BONUS: If you want to read the best post-series fic I've ever seen, with some of the best prose and plot I've come across in fanfiction, then I am happy to share Clocks of the Long Now with you. Read first, thank me later. Lostboy also has excellent Buffy analysis on his journal, so read those too.

2. Jordan Cavanaugh (Crossing Jordan) - Oh, Jordan. Jordan is just an unapologetic, passionate, self-destructive force. It's true that she mellows out after s2, but never entirely. Her occasional bouts of moral ambiguity coupled with her overwhelming instinct to distrust the people who love her most never fails to suck me in just as helplessly as everyone around her. Her relationship with Garret Macy is somewhat analogous to Buffy/Giles, which only helps to draw me back continually for rerun. And while she doesn't live in a state of near constant suffering, as Buffy does, her life is certainly ruled, at times, by great darkness and melancholy, which she faces with almost no grace whatsoever. Half the time, she only smiles when she's sad and would rather no one know it. In considering her over the series, it amazes me how effectively she was able to hide the great majority of her adventures (or, at the least, the extent of them) from her closest friends.
Jordan is an inspiration for self-destructive loners everywhere.

3. Balsa the Spearwielder (Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit) - What? Who the hell is this? An anime character? In front of Beckett? Why? Well, I'll tell you why. Because she's awesome.
I'm not really an anime fan. There were a couple years I delved into a few (mostly Bleach and Cowboy Bebop, the latter of which is legit good programming, no joke), but the look of that style of animation never really appealed to me, and neither did the characters that tended to repeat themselves (not even mentioning the plots, ugh). But Moribito is the true exception. I even bought the discs. Like Cowboy Bebop, the animation style has a lot of flow and movement in it, and the combat is extremely fun and visceral, which helped to sell it initially, but, honestly, even if it was as ugly as Inuyasha, I'd have loved it for Balsa.
Balsa is endlessly interesting to consider, just in terms of the life she's chosen to lead and the sorts of choices she makes on the show. She's a lone warrior type, someone who travels between countries without any real sense of provenience, and while she states explicitly that her life is dictated by her desire to balance a moral scale set askew in her backstory, it becomes clear on even cursory examination that her standards for morality and humanity are not the same which motivate characters like Beckett. Further, her decision to become a bodyguard may have been influenced by her deep feelings of responsibility over the losses in her past, but it's clear that to some degree she just does it because she likes it, and we know this because of the tone of her relationship with Tanda and the conversations they have. I've always been a sucker for lone warrior characters, but what sets her apart for me is that the end of her canonical story is not the end of her wandering, and we're left with the heavy suggestion that she likely will never stop to settle, and will instead die on the road. Her world is lonely, grim, and bloody, but it's a world she chooses to remain in, despite how much other characters express their wish for her to remain with them. The story of the show almost suggests to the viewer, and to her, that she really could settle down, that she really could learn to lose her wanderlust, but then she doesn't, and the fact that she's able to do this makes her so, ridiculously interesting to me.
I just love her. I want Balsa and Geralt of Rivia to have a long, torrid romance, and then I want them to join forces in their mission to protect the world's weary travelers for coin.

4. Kate Beckett (Castle) - I admit, it's weird putting Beckett below Balsa. I'll say that had she acted differently in "Recoil," she would've jumped the list and claimed slot three, no question. I accept the fact that she's someone who places a lot of importance in her morals, who doesn't want to become just as bad as the people who've ruined her life (not becoming a monster in the process of fighting them, as it were), and while that's a mindset that's commendable, I have a lot more fun with characters who are less concerned with retaining their humanity (Jordan, Balsa), or who've long since given up on the possibility of retaining it despite extended internal struggle (Buffy). The few times when she's let the rein slip on her iron, vice-like grip over her impulses are the times I've been so into the show that at that moment, if an armed gang broke into my apartment, I probably would not have noticed.
Beckett appeals to me with her bravery and staunch resoluteness, with the fact that despite heavy pain in her recent and distant past, she still manages to remain mostly unbroken. She easily could be Jordan, who is arguably her (preceding) shadow, but she instead chooses to meet the world with a relatively easy heart. How much of this is because Castle helps to offset her burden, I'm not entirely sure (Montgomery does suggest she was far less happy prior to Castle's...invasion), but the key is that she allows him to offset it at all. Despite the closeness between Jordan and Garret, Jordan rarely confides in him openly, instead choosing to obfuscate, admitting her pain without allowing a window to its source (this is best seen in 4.3, "Intruded;" so beautiful was her obfuscation, I honestly didn't even notice what she was doing until my third or fourth rewatch). Castle accuses Beckett of not wanting to heal, of hiding away in and defining herself by her past, but the reality is that compared to Jordan and Balsa, Beckett does make a real effort to keep herself firmly above water. This is part of what makes Beckett so interesting to me, but also what makes her slightly less fun, because, ultimately, I love a good loose cannon (and, god, as the only representative from an extant show on this list, may she have the opportunity to become one; there's still time).

5. Dana Scully (if you don't know which show, I am ashamed for and of you) - I feel like a terrible person for putting her last on any list, because there are few characters who can fill me with such a sense of warmth and affection, but I guess the reality is that as much as I love her, her pain makes me more sad than it does endlessly intrigued. The thing about Scully is that she's like the rest of the characters on this list, in that she's a victim of external circumstance which forever shattered who she was and who she would have been prior to this event. But I think one of the differences is that the other four chose to become defined by their tragedies. All four of them could have let it go, but they did not. Scully is different in that she accepts her tragedies but does not become driven by them (as Mulder does). Her arc after "Duane Barry" doesn't see her transformed into one haunted by the horrors inflicted on her, even when they manifest in the most nightmarish way imaginable in s4. Her pain is marked by how little she acknowledges it, and how quietly (if angrily) she faces it. The grace with which she copes with her life, with the degradation of the career she worked so hard to build, with the loneliness that quickly came to smother her life after she met Mulder, makes her seem almost saintly. Seeing her finally crack, as in "Never Again," "Redux," "Triangle," and "Orison" (though the cause of the breaks in these episodes are different) hits with the force of a shotgun blast, because it's almost shocking to see the depths of her pain and her passion when, for just a moment, she lets the mask slip.
BONUS: BeshterAngelus on FF.net tackled the most ambitious fanfic project I've ever seen: writing the whole of X-Files through Scully's perspective. To be clear, she's not rewriting episodes; she's writing between-scenes, turning the whole of the series into one extremely long, cohesive story (a feat I wouldn't think possible, given how little the mytharc makes sense, but BeshterAngelus achieves it). All of it is completely in character, and it really helped me to understand Scully outside her shield of professionalism, without being in Mulder's shadow, as well as to understand the evolution of her arc, from the green feebie we meet in s1 to the hardened, world-weary veteran we see by s6. It's long, it's great, and if you like the show, it will probably deepen your understanding of it, as it did mine.
So just read it. Clear your calendar. Start at Season One. But read Clocks first, because Clocks is just amazing.

--

At any rate, I've now given my favorite characters, with at least a partial description as to why they've made the list. I think just from my description, it might already be starting to become clear what it is about suffering that triggers my addiction. But I'll expound anyway, because that's what this blog is for.

Suffering leads to two things (well, more than that, but I'm focusing on two), if written correctly: it can apply an intense amount of depth and complexity to characters, warping their moral fortitude and how they choose to build and interact within relationships. It can lead to unpredictability, to great internal and external violence (toward themselves, toward enemies, and toward allies). But it can also lead to great strength and courage, to a bravery that is not, as Mycroft Holmes so cynically put it, a form of stupidity. Their struggle to retain their humanity and to keep their core selves whole and unsplintered is something I find endlessly fascinating to watch and consider, especially when morals formed in daylight are thrown against the sharpness of personal tragedy and threats of violence against either themselves or their loved ones. Those moments define who these characters are, who they perceive themselves to be, what role they truly occupy in the morality play of their lives. Sherlock tells John that heroes don't exist, and that if they did, he wouldn't be one, yet we see the extent of his sacrifice in "Reichenbach." Buffy in "The Gift" makes her threat to the Scoobies, yet we see what she does for Ben, and what action she takes upon reaching the top of the tower. Beckett seems to be on the edge of finally throwing away her moral convictions, and yet we see what she does in "After the Storm" and "Recoil." I could go on.
The point I'm making is that suffering and struggle as a plot device help to clearly define these characters against a high contrast backdrop as it's painted through desperate circumstance. They become flag bearers for qualities like zeal, courage, grit, fortitude, loyalty, and rightness, things which are so rarely important in middle class, Western life. They become heroes, sometimes role models, occasionally ideals, just as they can serve as a commentary on the consequences of leading too solitary and private a life. In my case, characters like Buffy and Beckett in some way reinstate my faith in humanity, because just for a moment they can make me believe in the strength the human will is capable of achieving.

Great suffering in one character also leads to the evolution of their foil character -- Beckett changes Castle, Jordan changes Garret (and Max), Balsa changes Tanda, Scully and Mulder change each other (though Scully is arguably Mulder's foil for a good portion of the series), Buffy changes everyone. Usually the foil won't have led a life of great suffering; for the most part, they will occupy the role of Normal, Everyday Guy, which makes them (at least to me) decidedly less interesting to think about. I'm fully able to psychoanalyze Castle, to figure out his backstory and how he ended up the man he is, but the story I've seen in him isn't one of great trial. He doesn't become interesting until he steps from the world of normal people with normal lives into Beckett's world, one which is filled with moral ambiguity and ugly people and desperate choices. Scully too is far less interesting before she moves into the basement office and Mulder's life, when suddenly the world and the rules she knew before have mostly lost their relevancy.

And this is why suffering, and at that, neverending, increasingly, pressingly, desperate amounts of it, as a plot device have so enthralled me that at times I've completely lost myself to these characters' stories, forgetting homework and dinner and the need for sleep and the fact that the world is a thing that exists that goes around the sun. Because I want to be Castle, or Scully, or Tanda, or Garret, to step into a more desperate world, where the colors are far brighter and the decisions far less trivial. Because, since I can never become Buffy, I'd like to just get as close to her as physically possible, so I may see the world as she does. So I may see truth and love and passion and loyalty, naked, pure, and uncomplicated, and maybe find its taste myself.


* I mention Joss Whedon a lot as if he's the sole author of his shows; I realize he's not the whole of his work, and I greatly respect and acknowledge the part writers like Marti Noxon, Jane Espenson, Doug Petrie, David Fury, Maurrissa Tancharoen etc. contributed to his shows, but I obviously can't list everyone involved every time I mention a Whedon show.

Castle: On "Still," bottle episodes, and how I would have done it

I guess I'll just start off by saying that I didn't necessarily dislike "Still." I responded to it much the same way I responded to "Squab" and a lot of Castle this season -- enjoyment but a lot of disappointment. I hate to talk about the show exceedingly negatively, because, as I think I stated previously, I love the show and I love the characters, so it's my hope that soon we'll be delivered another gem I can shower with affection. But I can't do this for "Still," and while I could just as easily say nothing, I really want to talk about it, so I'm going to do that, my tone be damned.

"Still" was, obviously, a bottle episode, employing my least favorite of all bottle techniques--the Clip Show. I think there's been only one example of the form that I've seen actually work, and that was when it was so nicely subverted by Community (though, to be honest, as much as it claimed to be a bottle episode, "Paradigms of Human Memory" didn't really seem to be one; it more seemed to just exist as a parody of the form). Clip Shows are annoying for obvious reasons, especially for someone like me, for whom characterization is sacred and rerunning is a way of life (and I'm by far not the most extreme example of it; I've known people to have seen an episode nine times within twenty-four hours of its airing, though I don't even know how that was done). There's huge appeal in reviewing past moments, but I bought the episodes on physical and/or digital release for exactly that purpose, and a Clip Show episode fails to capture the joy I find in reexperience while also becoming an episode that is itself hard to rewatch. I look to new episodes for fresh content, to reruns for fulfillment, and to fan communities and YouTube for compilations and clip shows, and it's always disappointing to get one of these from the show itself -- which often, due to the constraints of it being a broadcasted episode, leave out both the best and the most subtle examples anyway. Clip Shows also tend to cheapen the moments they excise from their context, and it was especially disappointing to see some of my favorite dramatic moments, such as those from "Countdown," "Knockdown," and "Knockout"/"Rise," being brought up in that fashion -- rapid fire, with the addition of the cheesy voice-over from Montgomery, which was a speech that in its context I truly loved.

In that vein, just from the standpoint of characterization, Clip Shows create a bizarre sort of fish eye perspective of the character's life. How is it that the moments these characters think of all have to do with something the audience has seen before? Why is it that when Beckett looks back on her life, as she tries to cope with the fact that she's going to die, she sees so many moments associated with her mother's murder, but not the actual crime scene of the murder which we know through backstory she's seen? Why doesn't she think of any part of her life prior to Castle's canon, such as her time in Russia, time with her father immediately following her mother's death, time in the police academy with Royce, or time between canon, such as her recovery in the hospital and the conversations she must have had with her father following her shooting? Limitations of the form tell us exactly why -- because these scenes don't exist to be drawn upon, and since it's a bottle episode, they're not going to go out and film them -- but this is precisely the problem. It's painfully obvious what the episode is (a bottle episode), and it has the effect of immediately flattening the characters. The act of reminiscing feels flat because it is flat, because the memory that these characters have is shortened immediately to incorporate only the happenings of the last few years, and it excludes all of those quiet moments that never would have been in an episode (something like Beckett and Castle taking coffee out on the balcony as the sun rises over the city, or them sitting opposite each other at the precinct, Castle typing into his laptop and Beckett filling out paperwork with a half-empty cup of coffee at her elbow, and after two hours one of them wonders aloud about the possibility of stopping to get a sandwich). Suspension of belief in a Clip Show becomes infinitely more difficult to retain, and it often feels to me like it's even uprooting some of my investment by exposing how shallow characterization can be.

But in the interest of not being completely negative, I'll say that I latched onto the few moments of legitimate dramatic tension in "Still" with a crack addict's desperation, and I savored them as such, because the reality is that characters having to come to terms with Impending Mortal Peril is easily my second or third favorite plot device. Further, I genuinely love the premise of the episode -- that we start with an idyllic morning, one in which the world for Beckett seems both bright and peaceful, and by noon she's suddenly faced with the fact that probably won't live to see the sunset. I love that Castle, as her Loyal, Loving Compatriot, refuses to leave her side or let her cede, mentally or physically. I love the implication that Esposito would put the Big Hurt on their bomber without any hesitation if it meant saving her. If the episode had been done with the same plot, but none of the Clip Show, "Still" easily could have made my top five list, no question. I would've eaten it up and waxed praise like a raving lunatic, complete with exclamation marks and scene by scene analysis and shoving a rerun into my morning. I might not have slept last night. That is the kind of love I'm prepared to have, so being denied that level of joy by something as lazy as a Clip Show just sours my view, especially when a plot that has the potential for emotional intensity instead becomes more of a joke fest.

This leads me back to what I'm fairly certain I brought up earlier in my discussion of "Squab," which is my feeling that Castle tends to skip over opportunities for depth and real character-character/viewer-character connections in favor of shallow humor. Again, I love Castle when it's funny, and it can be exceptionally good at it. I honestly think Castle has done some of the strongest parodies or "inspired by" plots I've seen anywhere, and I would take "Scared to Death" over Scary Movie any day of any week. But I'd again like to point out that Beckett/Stana Katic is capable of delivering an extreme amount of intensity, from regal, somber grace to burns-like-fire, homicidal rage, and it's disappointing to so rarely see that side of her come out to play. This is part of the reason I so love Joss Whedon's approach to television, because his characters constantly exist in that dynamic between funny and not even close to funny, between rage, neutrality, and an almost disquieting level of misery. Buffy Summers is a character I could never find enough positive words to lavish with, and a big part of that has to do with how dynamic her role is allowed to be. She can be hilarious one scene and depressing the next; she can go from a character that is extremely sympathetic, brave, and giving, to a character who is dislikeable, weak, and selfish, without ever going OOC. Jordan Cavanaugh is, to a lesser extent, like this, which is why (or part of the reason why) between these two characters I've never found an equal.

I've often complained that Beckett is simply too perfect to be wholly sympathetic. She's a paragon of goodness. There is no better way to illustrate this than by looking at her actions in episodes like "After the Storm" and "Recoil," in which she, for no explicable reason, allows the man who ruined her life to live. I cannot even begin to describe how I lamented when Beckett saved Bracken from the bomb in "Recoil," because there, truly, was the opportunity for Beckett to be dark and interesting and different. I don't know that there's ever been a moment where I was more disappointed in a character or a plot-point than then. I can't even think of the mytharc anymore without thinking of that scene. I can only hope that the finale sees Bracken's death (and that "Still" was made a bottleneck in part to help fund the finale), and that Beckett has some part in it. That would make me indescribably happy.

But, at any rate, "Still" sharply brings into focus how frustratingly, unrealistically perfect and unflappable Beckett is, as she stands stoically on a bomb arguing trivialities with Castle. On the one level, I can reason that she's able to do this because she's choosing to box away her situation by throwing herself into the comfort of shared memories and old, stupid jokes, but on another I feel that that is completely unrealistic and I wish that she was able to actually react. There was no claustrophobia, no fear, no indignant rage over her rapidly impending death, no lamentation, hardly any tears. She waits to meet her death with a grim stoicism that borders on apathy. Here again, for the second week in a row, Beckett was given the opportunity to flash back on past events in more than just a surface-y, Clip Show level -- to rage that she survived a bullet wound and a tiger and a bombing once already, that despite her decision to remain a moral being and keep the person she hates most alive, she is still going to die here in a freak accident, and she has to wait, tortuously, for that grisly death to come, while her partner feeds her false promises and the bomb unit under her feet gives up.

Just thinking about it, there are a hundred things I would have done differently with this episode. It would have been a lot more interesting to have Beckett actually break down, to have to deal with being unable to move as terror builds pressure in her blood. That coupled with rage toward herself for the decisions she's made and to the universe for stripping her of her life when she'd only so recently gotten it back would cause her to eventually lash out at Castle, to finally blow loose the misgivings she's had over their relationship in a petty attack aimed toward reducing her stress. Poor Castle would be doing his best to remain positive in the face of increasingly grim circumstances, trying to balance his own terror and sharp, internal keening against her needs, but would find himself at a loss at her sudden outburst, at once gaining piercing insight into his behavior and her perception of their relationship. Beckett would see immediately that she's hurt him, and the rage would drain away for just a moment as she rapidly, if somewhat shortly, apologizes and retracts back within herself. After she's saved, late in the night, Castle would tentatively return to her concerns, appreciating deeply how close he'd been to losing her and filled with the desire to make things right before time slips away from them, before either of them have a chance to step on another bomb.

To heighten emotional tension, just at the climax, when there's ten minutes to go, I'd have Castle bodily removed from her, on the insistence of the bomb squad leader. Castle would refuse, for the first time showing anger himself, because he finds himself suddenly, hotly enraged by the fact that Beckett's going to die and there's nothing he can do about it, and he can't even be there with her till the end. He too would be thinking about almost losing her to some gunman two years ago, thinking about the endless, stupid risks, about the fact that he's only just gotten to connect to her with the intimacy he's always wanted from her. He can't bring himself to walk out the door and say goodbye. He can't cope with the fact that this morning he was making hearts in her coffee, coffee she was never able to drink, and by tomorrow he's going to have to try to figure out what to do with the clothes she'd tossed casually over his dresser the night before and with what he's going to tell her father and what's going to happen when he goes into the precinct and sees her desk precisely as she left it. Then Beckett would look him straight in the eyes, suddenly strong and brave and stoic, and she would beg him quietly to leave. And Castle would have to stand there looking at her, wanting more than anything to reach across the spray-painted line and kiss her and carry her home, but be unable to so much as touch her, and then he would have to leave her. And then I would have done a big, wide shot of him walking off frame and out of the room, leaving Beckett in this vacuous, silent space. And then, finally, she would have broken completely, shaking and sobbing even as she stands perfectly still, lost in enough negative space to make Sherlock jealous. Fade to black.

Castle would call the precinct, tell them what's going on, demand they give him something he can use to break the code. On having his wild epiphany, he would break away from the bomb squad leader, who would try and fail to restrain him, and he would run full melt back into the apartment and back to Beckett. Her grief would immediately be replaced with rage upon his re-entrance, for his failure to respect her wish that he not die with her, for continuing to try to seduce her with false promises for survival, when by her count she's less than two minutes left, terrified afresh now not just because she's going to die, but because she knows that Castle will not have time to clear the building even if he were to listen to her and run. She hates him for forcing her to shoulder his death in addition to her own, and she rages against him in a bitter, grief-stricken torrent. Castle, angry at her now both for having accepted her death and for being angry at him, lashes right back at her, but shortly, and tells her that he came back because he's willing to gamble his life on how sincerely he believes himself to be right about the code word, and that she does not, in fact, bear the weight of the world upon her shoulders. He tells her that she isn't going to die. Maybe he even makes a meta joke about them having Plot Armor, because they're the main characters in his book. Beckett, having quieted in the face of his passion, love, and conviction, points out that he killed off Derrick Storm. Castle, having no adequate response, simply holds up the bomb remote and punches in the code. When it disarms, Beckett is still frozen for a moment, waiting for the blast, but when it doesn't come she abruptly falls sobbing into Castle, raging at him for being an idiot before he cuts her off by kissing her. She meets him with aggression born out of the terrified, electric energy still coursing through her soul and her blood, and they spend a long time like that, lip-locked and appreciating their ability to touch each other again. They break apart once the bomb squad leader re-enters, and then they both shakily return to their feet and walk out of the apartment.

Meanwhile, Esposito and Ryan, who had dashed to their car the second Castle had gotten off the line with them, are racing to the apartment, both filled with the unspoken dread that Castle had indeed gone back into that building, and that both him and Beckett are now dead. When they arrive to find that the building is not destroyed, for a moment they think that maybe they don't have the time right, that they got there before the bomb was set to blow, and that they're both about to witness something awful, which Ryan verbalizes to a small extent by starting to say something like "Javie, I..." and being unable to finish the thought. Just as he says this, in the background we see Beckett and Castle exiting the building, and then the two cops run to meet them, relieved at first, then, within a beat, overjoyed. Cue happy reunion and cop humor.

Again, that night, Beckett and Castle would finally have a moment, finally start a frank, adult conversation. Whether or not it'd be something included in the episode, I'm not sure. Probably I would just have them start it, and then do the typical close-up reaction thing, and then I would imply that they do indeed have it, fade to black, and next episode they seem healed.

And that is how I would have written "Still," more or less. I also would have had no music, at all. It would've been one of those episodes marked by its silence, offering, hopefully, a gravity and nakedness similar to that in "The Body" (Buffy). Just thinking about "Still" being produced in this fashion, instead of the Clip Show route they chose to go, makes me sadder about the episode than before.

Please, for the love of god, let Bracken die in the finale.

Glass and spatial metaphors, or, Why I love Sherlock (BBC)

The nicest thing about a blog of this nature is that I can discuss any subject in as much detail and verbosity as I wish, which is not a freedom I enjoy elsewhere, and for this reason I find myself compelled to come here and spill my heart. At the moment, there is only one thing, in the depths of my soul, that I truly wish to discuss, and that is Sherlock (of the BBC).

I was once a member of fandom, though it was for a different show. After something like two or three years there, I left, and while I've visited others since (most notably, the Buffy and Castle fandoms), I've never been able to stay due to the experiences I tend to have in these generally eclectic (though oddly homogeneous) communities. My experience in fandom will likely be the subject of a different post, so I'll not focus on that here, but I figure I'd give some context as to why the analysis I'm about to give isn't being posted on some fan site (though to be perfectly frank, I can't imagine anyone is or will ever be reading this, so I'm not entirely sure why I feel compelled to explain).

Anyway, Sherlock. I'll admit I didn't love the show at first blush. I only vaguely appreciated it. I watched it at some point between the airing of s1 and s2, and I only made it through the first two episodes before deciding it wasn't holding my attention. It was interesting, but Sherlock as a character annoyed me, I found the plotting to be odd, and I absolutely could not buy some of the deductions. More to the point, at the time all I was looking for was another incarnation of the Woman, and a show with two male leads, one of whom could make House and Perry Cox look meek, just wasn't what I wanted. But somewhat recently I gave it another go, and now I see its genius. Not only that, but I can now see the Woman in Sherlock Holmes (not Irene Addler; the other Woman, the conception of her that I posited in my first post) quite clearly, and I cannot help but view him with an empathy that before I couldn't feel.

I'll save a discussion on Sherlock characterization for a later post, because while a fresh perspective on it was one thing that helped me to get into the show, that was by no means the thing that caught my attention, sucked me in, and now continues to cause me to rerun it and think about it. My obsession was founded in the cinematography and how the actors move through space. There is an extreme and subtle genius in it, and I find myself constantly finding something new to appreciate.

I could talk for ten minutes about this still, and I probably will...

Part of me is tempted to couch this discussion in some great comparative framework. It would be relatively simple for me to make my points on Sherlock by grabbing stills from other shows and saying something to the tune of "And this is why Sherlock does it better." But I've decided not to do that. I've also decided that I'm not going to generalize my discussion to the whole series. Since this is my blog, I'm going to go through each episode one-by-one, and I'm going to talk about the cameras and the acting and whatever else I feel like talking about. I simply have too much to say to be constrained to the big picture. But before doing that, I wanted to give a broader summary of my thoughts as they are now, just so I can provide an idea of what points I'm going to be making. This is probably the only part of my discussion that is going to be spoiler-free, so if anyone is reading, what lies below is safe if you haven't yet watched Sherlock (though if this is the case, two questions: why are you here, and why haven't you?).

First thought - The way the show is shot turns Sherlock into a character who is simultaneously empathetic and completely enigmatic. While he seems accessible, the viewer constantly will find herself at arm's length from him, never truly meeting him at his level. The viewer is effectively put into John's shoes without her ever actually directly occupying them. I will end up spending a lot of time on this point, so I'm not going to expound much on that here, but the main thing I want to suggest is that this is as a result of cinematic decisions mainly. I will not deny the importance of the performance and the writing, because certainly BC's acting is a large part of what sells it, but I will argue that its his relationship with the camera, rather than with the words, that makes his role so interesting. I will end up making a similar case when talking about John Watson, and his relationship with Sherlock, as well as other characters.

this still says more than simply how sexy that coat is

Second thought - The show makes excellent (and constant) use of negative space. Anyone who's watched the show will probably think immediately of how text is projected on blank space on walls and in the air, and while negative space is often employed for this purpose, that is by no means its only use. Negative space is often used to spatially literalize the distance between characters, and its use as a metaphoric device truly deserves some attention and recognition.

negative space here, used for several purposes

Third thought - Extending off that point, Sherlock utilizes metaphors in its camerawork in more ways than just its use of negative space. One of the more obvious is scenes shot through glass, like windows and doors, as well as the use of mirrors and other reflective surfaces. While this cinematic device is nothing new to film, I would nonetheless like to talk about how clever its employment often is, and why it deserves to be discussed. There are other metaphors I saw expressed through scene composition, but I will save specific examples for later posts.

ultimately, this is more than just artful composition

I have other thoughts, many of which have to do with how clever I find the cinematography to be in more of a general sense, but I will not spend the time to list them all here, given that they center around one scene or one episode.

And so that is the game plan. I look forward to talking about this, perhaps in greater detail than anyone cares about, because I cannot bear to not talk about Sherlock for any longer. Distance from fandom does indeed have its disadvantages... But, at any rate, onward, to "A Study in Pink."