Okay, so we FINALLY got a trailer for the Disney+ Obi-Wan Kenobi series. I’m so excited! Obi-Wan is one of my favorite Star Wars characters and has been since I was seven years old. I’m glad that the rest of the Star Wars fanbase is excited for this show, too. Unlike Boba Fett, Obi-Wan is a major supporting character with an established personality, so he has an actual character to explore, especially when he’s now in the throes of defeat while the Empire is at its height.
Yes, I found this progression image on social media. Yes, it rocks very hard.
However, I’m confused about the quote that most online Star Wars fans associate with Obi-Wan: “Hello, there!” …That’s it? Obi-Wan is the blueprint for most mentor characters in live-action speculative fiction, and the quote the fanbase most associates with him is a simple greeting?
What about “These are not the droids you’re looking for,” or “Mos Eisley: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious”? Or my very favorite: “If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
SPOILERS for Netflix’s Fear Street: 1994.There may also be spoilers for some of the original Fear Street books, which I read five bazillion years ago.
Gah, okay, I just watched Fear Street: 1994, and I am SO HAPPY! I loved the Fear Street books when I was in my tweens and early teens, and some of the stuff from those books still lives rent-free in my head*. When I found out Netflix was adapting Fear Street, I started freaking out with excitement. Now that I’ve watched the first of the three installments, I’m even more excited! They did a great job of adapting and updating the book series’ mythos of Shadyside, that ever-cursed town, without adapting any of the books directly.
Three teens trying to put a 16th century witch’s spirit to rest. Just typical Fear Street stuff.
*Thanks to the 99 Fear Street trilogy, I had an irrational fear of garbage disposals that lasted into my mid-twenties. I could use garbage disposals, but I always had images in my head of someone getting their hand stuck in one. Thanks for that, R.L. Stine!
Before I break down what I loved about Fear Street: 1994, I want to talk about why I loved the books so much. They were the pulpy horror books that I devoured. I was never really into Goosebumps, but Fear Street was just the young adult (YA) series I needed when I was waiting for the rest of the Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events books to be released. Yes, there was a time when readers were still waiting for HP and ASoUE books to be published. Anyway, Fear Street was a series about the residents of Shadyside, a town where citizens tended to die at an alarming rate. As the books progressed, they became more about curses and ghosts and witchcraft, particularly with The Fear Street Saga trilogy and Fear Street Sagas, both of which combined pulpy horror with (probably not that accurate) historical fiction. The characters were pretty much always teenagers, and they often got into crazy horror/supernatural dealings. I always cared enough about the protagonists that I hoped they would survive. Mostly, they did, but a few weren’t that lucky. It was a great series for someone who was just beginning to have a more teenage view of the world. Also, most of the books had been published by the time I discovered the series, so I didn’t have to wait for anything!
Okay, now that I’m done babbling about the book series, let’s dig into why Fear Street: 1994 is fantastic:
Alternate Title: Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Police Brutality
Note: I did not write this blog. This is a guest blog written by my sister, JoJo. She has lots of thoughts about this show and this topic, so I encouraged her to blog about it.
In the months since the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by American police officers, TV shows featuring cops have come under much scrutiny. Much of this scrutiny pertains to the glorification of police brutality as a means to solve the mystery and serve justice. More specifically, those against this type of representation argue that these shows glorify cops who go rogue and break the law in the name of justice. This then normalizes the real-life actions of cops who kill unarmed black people and are not held accountable for their actions. For a fuller explanation of this phenomenon, I suggest this Daily Show clip.
Since this criticism has arisen, many wonder what we should do with cop shows. Some even wonder if we should get rid of them altogether. While I agree that the American portrayal of police brutality is harmful and wrong, I don’t agree that we need to get rid of police shows altogether (although, we could maybe use a few fewer CSIs and Law and Orders). What many don’t realize is that Britain has provided us with a template for how to represent the police without glorifying them or police brutality. One of the best, though not perfect, examples of this is Grantchester.
SPOILERS for the Game of Thrones series finale, “The Iron Throne.”
Well, after eight seasons and a whole lot of shocking deaths, Game of Thrones has ended. Naturally, the entire internet has opinions about it, and publications are flurrying to write think pieces about it. Lots ofthinkpieces. I kind of love how the writer of the Vox GoT piece says it feels like “a slap in the face.” Really, Zack Beauchamp? You didn’t like a TV series’s finale, so it feels like the show hit you? Okay, then. That’s not melodramatic at all.
