exorcist soulmates have adventures
Nov. 10th, 2017 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitI'm now caught up with all the aired episodes of "The Exorcist" (through tonight's 2x06).
Some thoughts under the cut.
I'm liking the slower burn of this season, in part because I find the gradual buildup of wrongness much scarier than S1's "all open sores and mucus and murder, all the time" thing. Plus old isolated houses and dangerous things in the woods are tropes I find especially creepy. I definitely was not expecting the Grace twist; there were good plausible explanations for her never interacting with anybody but Andy. And in Grace and Nikki, we're finally seeing what's tempting about the demons, whereas in S1 possession seemed like a pretty obvious bad bargain.
I'm very very worried about Tomas. If there's an S3, I think that it's going to involve Tomas becoming possessed and Marcus having to exorcise him (because Marcus's angst will never end, and what could be angstier, with his self-doubt and understandable fear of failure, than having to exorcise someone he loves?). It's not clear yet how the visions are the demons' way to get to Tomas. At first I thought it was to build up his pride and vanity and make him think he's the Chosen One, but he seems to have got that under control after his big mistake with Harper, to the point where he now thinks of the visions as a curse. Maybe it's just that they're in his head now and can make him see whatever they like.
I like S2's new family (especially Verity) and I really need everybody to be okay in the end. As for other new characters, so far I'm not terribly impressed with Lara Croft, Freelance Exorcist. Mouse desperately needs some character development, because right now she's a walking, talking, demon-torturing cliché. Who killed (what was left of) Maria Walters to protect her own secret, and has perhaps put Father Bennett in danger of possession by doing so.
The Marcus/Peter kiss in 2x05 made me happy on some levels and less so on others. There was never really any is-he-isn't-he queerbating, but it's still nice to see it unequivocally confirmed that yes, Marcus is into men. And I am happy happy happy to get something I often doubted I'd see, which is a genre show with a gay hero. (I guess technically Tomas is the hero? Maybe? It started out that way, but Tomas and Marcus seem to be a leading duo now rather than a lead and a second lead.) As for Peter himself . . . I don't know. He meant well by what he did on the boat, and Marcus seemed to feel helped by it, but the arrogance of basically forcing a stranger to undergo a session of amateur psychotherapy with you gives me serious pause. Consent is important! But at least he did take no for an answer when things started to get sexual. I'm also worried by a theory I read that Peter may be other than what he seems--the demons worked on Andy by promising him the things he wanted most, and Marcus, feeling cold and alone without his sense of a divine presence, wants badly to love and be loved. We have seen other characters interact with Peter, so he's not like Grace, but that doesn't mean he's not possessed or somehow influenced.
And of course I ship Marcus/Tomas, so I can't be 100% delighted at the prospect of Marcus getting involved with somebody else. I know Marcus/Tomas will never happen canonically. I know that Ben Daniels and perhaps other people involved with the show have said that Marcus and Tomas don't feel that way about each other (though the way they interact doesn't look like brotherhood or totally nonerotic friendship to me, I have to say). But I want them to get together anyway, because they have mad gorgeous chemistry.
I've been thinking a lot about Marcus (I'm sure you're astonished to hear it). In the abstract he sounds like a trope: the tough guy with the tragic past. But I think that, like a lot of things about this show, the way it plays out is more complicated and more interesting. Partly it's that his tragic past isn't just the one traumatic event, but all the consequences of it: the orphanage, the bullying, the loneliness, the self-harm, and then the great revelation that gives him a sense of purpose and of love. Then I think there was another great loss we've only heard hinted at, in his reference to a . . . [significant pause] . . . friend who was destroyed during an exorcism. And then, on top of it all, his failure in Mexico City and his feeling that god's love has been withdrawn. It feels to me like a much more truthful way of looking at trauma: not as a single scarring moment, but as the start of a process that unfolds over a lifetime.
One of my favorite scenes from this series so far is Marcus telling Harper that she's going to feel awful for quite a while, and then she'll get better. So much truer than just promising her that everything will be okay. But Marcus, I think, has never gotten much better. I wonder if he thinks he has. This is another thing that makes his Tragic Backstory more interesting than the usual. He's not healed, but he's also not the stoic hero whose pain is hidden down deep, nor is he the dramatically brooding type. He seems fine, right up until he's not. Specifically, he seems fine until he encounters a man he feels emotionally drawn to, and then all the appearance of okayness is gone is a flash and he's spilling out, bleeding all over the guy. He'd known Tomas for, what, a couple of days, and then as soon as Tomas tries to kick him out, he's all "Oh by the way my father murdered my mother and I am extremely traumatized." Same thing with Peter, although Peter at least invited the confidence. I don't think Marcus is deliberately manipulative, but it's a pretty dysfunctional mode of being, and I wouldn't be surprised if it had driven people away in the past.
I guess part of the reason I ship Marcus and Tomas so strongly is how Tomas deals with Marcus's pain. He doesn't play psychiatrist like Peter did, he just sort of accepts that sometimes things are awful and people get terribly hurt. He lets Marcus stay without making a fuss, he just quietly lets Marcus be safe with him, and to me (perhaps this says more about me than about the characters) that's worth more than Peter's more obvious, dramatic (self-dramatizing?) kind of helping.
Of course they quarrel sometimes, and of course deep down Marcus doesn't feel safe. Possessed!Cindy at the beginning of S2 goes right for that as Marcus's weak point--Tomas will abandon you too, she says. He doesn't need you.
It's rare to see a heroic male character whose vulnerabilities are so open and so . . . unheroic. I can't think of a modern fictional hero-type who cries as much and as easily as Marcus does. And kudos to Ben Daniels for being able to show all that pain without Marcus's weakness, the broken parts of his personality, being coded as somehow "feminine." (I have absolutely no problem with camp/feminine gay male characters, but the association of gay/emotional/"feminine"/weak can be toxic. And I have to admit I find it refreshing to see onscreen a masculine gay man who has a full emotional range, who's not a butch stereotype either.)
I will reluctantly now shut up about Marcus. (I have a lot of thoughts about his sexuality and his spirituality and how they interact, but I want to try and put them into a fic.)
I did want to quickly note how impressed I am by what I guess I have to call the social justice aspects of the show. Not that it's explicitly political, but I like that it's just matter-of-factly doing good stuff. There are a lot of characters of color in important roles, including one of the leads. There are FOUR queer characters so far, including one of the leads. The presentation of the characters with disabilities seems pretty good to me, too. And there's a really surprising alertness to social justice issues, from gay conversion therapy to racist microaggressions. It's not perfect--I'd have preferred, for example, that the mention of the Catholic Church's homophobia hadn't come from someone we know to be possessed by a demon (though I did love Verity's response to Andy white-knighting her)--but considering this is broadcast television in the US, I think it's doing awfully well.
For some time now I've been wondering if I would ever feel really, properly fannish again. I guess I have my answer.
Some thoughts under the cut.
I'm liking the slower burn of this season, in part because I find the gradual buildup of wrongness much scarier than S1's "all open sores and mucus and murder, all the time" thing. Plus old isolated houses and dangerous things in the woods are tropes I find especially creepy. I definitely was not expecting the Grace twist; there were good plausible explanations for her never interacting with anybody but Andy. And in Grace and Nikki, we're finally seeing what's tempting about the demons, whereas in S1 possession seemed like a pretty obvious bad bargain.
I'm very very worried about Tomas. If there's an S3, I think that it's going to involve Tomas becoming possessed and Marcus having to exorcise him (because Marcus's angst will never end, and what could be angstier, with his self-doubt and understandable fear of failure, than having to exorcise someone he loves?). It's not clear yet how the visions are the demons' way to get to Tomas. At first I thought it was to build up his pride and vanity and make him think he's the Chosen One, but he seems to have got that under control after his big mistake with Harper, to the point where he now thinks of the visions as a curse. Maybe it's just that they're in his head now and can make him see whatever they like.
I like S2's new family (especially Verity) and I really need everybody to be okay in the end. As for other new characters, so far I'm not terribly impressed with Lara Croft, Freelance Exorcist. Mouse desperately needs some character development, because right now she's a walking, talking, demon-torturing cliché. Who killed (what was left of) Maria Walters to protect her own secret, and has perhaps put Father Bennett in danger of possession by doing so.
The Marcus/Peter kiss in 2x05 made me happy on some levels and less so on others. There was never really any is-he-isn't-he queerbating, but it's still nice to see it unequivocally confirmed that yes, Marcus is into men. And I am happy happy happy to get something I often doubted I'd see, which is a genre show with a gay hero. (I guess technically Tomas is the hero? Maybe? It started out that way, but Tomas and Marcus seem to be a leading duo now rather than a lead and a second lead.) As for Peter himself . . . I don't know. He meant well by what he did on the boat, and Marcus seemed to feel helped by it, but the arrogance of basically forcing a stranger to undergo a session of amateur psychotherapy with you gives me serious pause. Consent is important! But at least he did take no for an answer when things started to get sexual. I'm also worried by a theory I read that Peter may be other than what he seems--the demons worked on Andy by promising him the things he wanted most, and Marcus, feeling cold and alone without his sense of a divine presence, wants badly to love and be loved. We have seen other characters interact with Peter, so he's not like Grace, but that doesn't mean he's not possessed or somehow influenced.
And of course I ship Marcus/Tomas, so I can't be 100% delighted at the prospect of Marcus getting involved with somebody else. I know Marcus/Tomas will never happen canonically. I know that Ben Daniels and perhaps other people involved with the show have said that Marcus and Tomas don't feel that way about each other (though the way they interact doesn't look like brotherhood or totally nonerotic friendship to me, I have to say). But I want them to get together anyway, because they have mad gorgeous chemistry.
I've been thinking a lot about Marcus (I'm sure you're astonished to hear it). In the abstract he sounds like a trope: the tough guy with the tragic past. But I think that, like a lot of things about this show, the way it plays out is more complicated and more interesting. Partly it's that his tragic past isn't just the one traumatic event, but all the consequences of it: the orphanage, the bullying, the loneliness, the self-harm, and then the great revelation that gives him a sense of purpose and of love. Then I think there was another great loss we've only heard hinted at, in his reference to a . . . [significant pause] . . . friend who was destroyed during an exorcism. And then, on top of it all, his failure in Mexico City and his feeling that god's love has been withdrawn. It feels to me like a much more truthful way of looking at trauma: not as a single scarring moment, but as the start of a process that unfolds over a lifetime.
One of my favorite scenes from this series so far is Marcus telling Harper that she's going to feel awful for quite a while, and then she'll get better. So much truer than just promising her that everything will be okay. But Marcus, I think, has never gotten much better. I wonder if he thinks he has. This is another thing that makes his Tragic Backstory more interesting than the usual. He's not healed, but he's also not the stoic hero whose pain is hidden down deep, nor is he the dramatically brooding type. He seems fine, right up until he's not. Specifically, he seems fine until he encounters a man he feels emotionally drawn to, and then all the appearance of okayness is gone is a flash and he's spilling out, bleeding all over the guy. He'd known Tomas for, what, a couple of days, and then as soon as Tomas tries to kick him out, he's all "Oh by the way my father murdered my mother and I am extremely traumatized." Same thing with Peter, although Peter at least invited the confidence. I don't think Marcus is deliberately manipulative, but it's a pretty dysfunctional mode of being, and I wouldn't be surprised if it had driven people away in the past.
I guess part of the reason I ship Marcus and Tomas so strongly is how Tomas deals with Marcus's pain. He doesn't play psychiatrist like Peter did, he just sort of accepts that sometimes things are awful and people get terribly hurt. He lets Marcus stay without making a fuss, he just quietly lets Marcus be safe with him, and to me (perhaps this says more about me than about the characters) that's worth more than Peter's more obvious, dramatic (self-dramatizing?) kind of helping.
Of course they quarrel sometimes, and of course deep down Marcus doesn't feel safe. Possessed!Cindy at the beginning of S2 goes right for that as Marcus's weak point--Tomas will abandon you too, she says. He doesn't need you.
It's rare to see a heroic male character whose vulnerabilities are so open and so . . . unheroic. I can't think of a modern fictional hero-type who cries as much and as easily as Marcus does. And kudos to Ben Daniels for being able to show all that pain without Marcus's weakness, the broken parts of his personality, being coded as somehow "feminine." (I have absolutely no problem with camp/feminine gay male characters, but the association of gay/emotional/"feminine"/weak can be toxic. And I have to admit I find it refreshing to see onscreen a masculine gay man who has a full emotional range, who's not a butch stereotype either.)
I will reluctantly now shut up about Marcus. (I have a lot of thoughts about his sexuality and his spirituality and how they interact, but I want to try and put them into a fic.)
I did want to quickly note how impressed I am by what I guess I have to call the social justice aspects of the show. Not that it's explicitly political, but I like that it's just matter-of-factly doing good stuff. There are a lot of characters of color in important roles, including one of the leads. There are FOUR queer characters so far, including one of the leads. The presentation of the characters with disabilities seems pretty good to me, too. And there's a really surprising alertness to social justice issues, from gay conversion therapy to racist microaggressions. It's not perfect--I'd have preferred, for example, that the mention of the Catholic Church's homophobia hadn't come from someone we know to be possessed by a demon (though I did love Verity's response to Andy white-knighting her)--but considering this is broadcast television in the US, I think it's doing awfully well.
For some time now I've been wondering if I would ever feel really, properly fannish again. I guess I have my answer.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-11 06:06 am (UTC)I really don't watch a lot of television, and am in fact in the stalled middle of about three series that I was supposed to be watching with other people, but you are making a very strong case for The Exorcist with this and your previous post on the show.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-11 06:42 am (UTC)The storytelling is not very television-like, either. There are no filler episodes and basically no monster-of-the-week stuff, just long arcs.
And here's a small gifset that gives some sense of Marcus's vulnerability. It's not one of the most dramatic moments, because a lot of those are really spoilery or need context, but I think you can see a bit of what I'm talking about.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-12 12:57 am (UTC)If by "help" you mean "apparently increase the chances that I am about to throw myself down a rabbit hole of Catholic demonology," yes . . .
Where are you watching this show? Is it available on Netflix or will I have to rely on the less-patrolled corners of the internet?
And here's a small gifset that gives some sense of Marcus's vulnerability. It's not one of the most dramatic moments, because a lot of those are really spoilery or need context, but I think you can see a bit of what I'm talking about.
Yes. That look from under his eyebrows in the last frame, and then down.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-12 01:54 am (UTC)Wheeeee!
I'd say, give it 2 episodes. There's a powerful Marcus-and-Tomas scene towards the end of episode 2, and if that doesn't work for you, the show probably never will.
You can download the episodes from Amazon for $1.99 a pop for SD or $2.99 for HD. There's no DVD out yet, but the preorder has it at $40 so it would actually be cheaper to buy each episode. I'll PM you with another option.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-11 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-11 05:29 pm (UTC)It's notable that those are both British shows, and British TV is somewhat better than American TV about including queer characters. I'm still amazed at seeing an American broadcast TV series--especially one that's neither a sitcom nor a Serious Drama--with a queer hero.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-11 06:25 pm (UTC)I love Marcus, and I hope we get to have more time hearing about him. And I love how Marcus and Tomas seem to be struggling towards emotional support for each other, a little embarrassed and a little awkward but also honest and warm. I wish there was more of their domestic set up (shared hotel rooms? *g*)
I'm so hoping that S2 proceeds as strongly as it has started. And that it does get commissioned for S3 (I've seen some tumblr posts to the effect that it hinges on S2 ratings, but apparently they spiked since the canon gay which is a good thing on every level tbh)
no subject
Date: 2017-11-11 09:16 pm (UTC)*high-five* I always love it when we share a fandom! And for once I'm not coming to the fandom super super late, only moderately late. With Hannibal I felt like the interesting ideas had already been discussed ad infinitum, and the interesting stories had already been written, but I don't think that's the case with The Exorcist.
I've started rewatching S1 to try to get a clearer sense of Marcus and Tomas and their relationship, without being distracted by the plot. Heh.
(Have used Giles icon as he's the closest thing I have to an exorcist.)
no subject
Date: 2017-11-12 07:14 pm (UTC)Apparently the original book has some canon gay, so I'm trying to figure out whether I dare read it. I'm not great with horror (I regret reading 'Misery' deeply) but I did OK with The Stepford Wives, it depends where it falls on the spectrum.
try to get a clearer sense of Marcus and Tomas and their relationship, without being distracted by the plot
this is very much on my 'to do' list! *g*
no subject
Date: 2017-11-12 07:42 pm (UTC)I keep wanting to compare it to Supernatural when I'm explaining it to people
What, there are people for whom, "hot priests fight demons, and one of them is gay?" isn't enough? . . . perhaps I'm just assuming everyone has my own low "I'll give it a try" threshold.
On rewatching I'm finding that Marcus and Tomas's relationship gets weirder the more you look at it. There's a scene where Tomas says to Jessica that he's met this man that he has no reason to trust but yet he does, and that sums up a lot of their dynamic. They're super close, super fast, although some of that may be down to Marcus's patented "You are a nice man and I've known you for more than a day, so it's time you heard about my unspeakable childhood" thing. Even their quarrels and power struggles seem to come from the bond between them, somehow; it's friction from being so close. I mostly don't go for soul-bond tropes, but this is one fandom where they wouldn't be out of place.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-12 08:01 pm (UTC)Horror threshold for me is very very contextual. I don't mind most of this show because I do not perceive demonic possession as anything to worry about. If these people were meant to be acting under the influence of .e.g a hallucinogen or something, then I'd be much more distressed by it.
I mostly don't go for soul-bond tropes, but this is one fandom where they wouldn't be out of place.
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Yes that would kind of make sense. And it would work in the world of this canon really. Some kind of Sentinel-esque 'in ancient times of exorcism there was always a pair, a finder and a fighter', something like that.... *hears the pitter patter of tiny plotbunnies*