Idyllic

So there was a discussion in mollyamory's journal about idylls, and she wrote a ficlet for dorinda, and then more discussion about idylls ensued, and now arduinna created an Idyll Challenge on AO3 and it was all good. I'm so on this. Not that anyone is going to want my fandom (because I'm just pacificrimpacificrimpacificrimpacificrim all the time lately), but it's an excuse to get poor Herc and Stacker out of the war zone for just a little while, right?

Idyll stories are hard for me to find in the shows I tend to like. For so long I've been very grimdark oriented, or gritty cop stuff, and those don't tend to inspire that kind of fanfiction. And it turns out I haven't read some of the famous Professionals idyll stories, and the one I did read scarred me for life because the author basically yanks the idyll out of your hands at the end and makes you want to slit your wrists, which, if you ask me, is rather counterproductive for the feelings an idyll story would produce. Anyway, I think this will be fun.

Speaking of grimdark, I have been rewatching the first two seasons of Luther in prep for a) season 3, and b) making a vid. At VVC, I got into a lengthy discussion with cesperanza and mollyamory about John Luther and Alice Morgan, and how much I love Alice even though she is a dog-murdering psycho bitch from hell, a type of character I normally not only can't relate to but usually actively loathe. I don't know what it is about Ruth Wilson/Alice Morgan, and if it has something to do with her being obsessed with John Luther because who wouldn't be obsessed by anyone who looks like Idris Elba, but I adore Alice. Sometimes this disturbs me. Because, I mean, I don't really care if she kills human characters, for story reasons, but the instant someone harms an animal, I am out of there. And yet. So, disturbing.

Anyways, all this has made me want to vid it badly, but I also am having issues watching the show again. Jesus jumped up Christ on a sidecar that show is horrific. I mean, it's not a thriller or cop drama. It's pure unadulterated horror, moreso in the second season (and from what I hear, the third). I made the mistake of watching second season shortly before my trip to London and I swear I expected psychos in Punch masks to be stalking me when I was walking around at night, or guys with ball peen hammers attacking me in the train stations. It made me so creeped out, kind of queasy, and I NEVER EVER get queasy from fiction. I'm one of those people who can completely disengage from dramas or literature, and I have a hard time suspending disbelief, but Luther CREEPS ME THE FUCK OUT most of the time, even as OTT as it is.

I mean, yes, it's a very Grand Guignol theatrical horror, designed to disgust and shake you up, and to make John Luther look...well, I'm not sure. Put upon is something of a comical understatement; he's of course very Christlike in his suffering and need to stop terrible things happening to innocent people, even to the point where they've engaged in very crucifixiony imagery. But I have to say it's been very effective on me, which surprises me. I just really don't want to watch a lot of what they do. It's so fucking disturbing.

And too, I'm just really really tired of the obsession with serial killers and the increasingly Rube Goldbergian steps the killers create to engage in their pathologies. I mean, they're all just so elaborate and vicious and grimdark and what have you, and it's almost always against women and I'm just. so. tired. I watched this summer the English-language European TV show Crossing Lines, which aired on NBC and starred my beloved William Fichtner (as well as bonus Tom Wlaschiha, who was the only character I liked on Game of Thrones), and while subsequent eps weren't as bad as the first, OF COURSE the first episode that sets up their cross-European countries crime task force was about a serial killer who murders prostitutes in a particularly elaborate pathology. I just...I had really hoped something European would be better than that. Fortunately they moved away from it a bit but the bad bitter taste was still in my mouth by then. Everyone keeps trying to get me to watch all these other shows, but you know, when Dexter's done (thank god) this season, that's it for me and serial killers for a good long while.

Anyways, I still love aspects of Luther, but jeez, show, can't you just lighten up a little bit? Seriously, we'll still really love John Luther, I promise, and we'll still really like Alice even if we don't know why. You can stop with the hideous, increasingly byzantine torture of women on the show, we'll still watch. Really we will. But I'm skipping over a lot of those parts when I make my vid (if I can, because right now, I can't even vid with my dead hard drive), m'kay? Because you are causing me nightmares, show. And my sleep is already troubled enough.