I’m not surprised. I’m hurt, frustrated, embarrassed, angry, and sad, but not surprised. After all, the reason I stopped watching House in the first place was that it was so predictable, it made me feel clairvoyant. Sure enough, the ‘asexual couple’ episode was exactly what I expected it to be.
There has been some outrage in the asexual community over comments made by Doctor Who and Sherlock producer, Steven Moffat, once considered an ace champion.
One of my favorite holiday traditions, whether that holiday is Halloween or Christmas, is to collect a playlist of holiday-themed episodes from my favorite TV shows. There are a dozen episodes of American television that center around the harvest festival we affectionately refer to as ‘Thanksgiving.’ Or, as Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer refers to it, “A ritual sacrifice. With pie.” There are lists all over the internet, and I could just marathon Friends episodes, but here are some of my favorites:
Equally as important as celebrating asexual heroes is having real-life reflections on the screen or page. Time Lords and wizards are all well and good, but they can too easily be dismissed as ‘unrealistic,’ because they don’t actually exist in our world where everyone wants sex all of the time. That doesn’t help ordinary human beings who are looking for validation, and reassurance that feeling otherwise is still okay.
Depictions of asexuality seem to be more common in Great Britain than the United States, possibly reflecting real life demographics. One of the more famous English ace examples in fiction would be the titular character from television’s Doctor Who. The Doctor is a man who has shied away from sexual encounters over the course of his 900-plus years. Granted, he’s a time-traveling alien whose biology has not been fully explored, but he’s also shown to be a brilliant, passionate, deeply feeling individual, rather than some emotionless automaton, so in terms of role models, the asexual community could do a lot worse.
It’s no secret among fans and critics that CBS’s The Big Bang Theory didn’t find its footing until the character of Penny (Kaley Cuoco) went from the vacuous token blonde woman to challenging fan favorite Sheldon (Jim Parsons) for dominance in their social circle. In other words, the show didn’t take off until Penny actually became a character instead of a piece of furniture.
The new television season has started, which means that I’ll probably be posting a lot about television. For a period of time last year I was trying to do weekly recaps of Castle in addition to episodes of any of my other favorite shows, but I fell behind and since no one was begging me to get back on the horse, I let the horse go.
But I had a bad reaction to one of the new pilots that I was forced to watch against my will and which has, somehow, become of the best received new shows of the season. That show is ABC’s Revenge, and it’s on again tonight. I decided – largely because I’m bored and needed a break from my memoir and my angst-fueled adolescence – that I was going to rewatch the pilot, and recap/review it right here before tonight’s new episode.
The reason people allow themselves to be fooled repeatedly by the same culprit is because of that little thing called hope. The hope that maybe, this time, despite all evidence to the contrary, things will be different. It’s a feeling I’m all too familiar with.
Last night saw the season premieres of three SyFy original series: fan favorites Eureka and Warehouse 13, and the pilot of the new show Alphas. Curiously, last year’s newbie Haven is going solo on Friday nights, despite the fact that it more closely matches Alphas in tone than the other two do. Still, a three-hour Monday night binge of sci-fi is just what the Doctor ordered to cure the weekday ennui.
Writer-producer and fellow geek Amy Berg got her start writing for SNICK’s Kenan & Kel, and went on to write for such shows as Boomtown, Threshold, and The 4400. Currently she is a writer and co-executive producer for SyFy’s Eureka, the show about Jack Carter, the sheriff of “a little town with a big secret.” Ms. Berg graciously took time out of her schedule to answer a few questions I had about writing genre, shipping, and the alternate timeline that turned the town of Eureka upside-down.
I posted a tutorial on my blog for creating a miniature of the Great A’Tuin from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld - The Turtle Moves.
