Distraction: What I Am Watching (Or At Least Attempting To) Pt. A

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. And despite what I said above, I have been avoiding telling you about what I have been watching. Not that you care. But at least I am not telling you about my D&D character. The theme almost always comes in batches.

I am sounding like a broken record (to all the kiddies out there, LP records used to get scratched easily, and would begin skipping, repeating the same bit over and over) but this Pause has me seeking easy distraction and not able to focus on much. We are into month... four (!!!) of this whole strange historical event, and I have to admit, it has become a New Normal. That doesn't mean I am dealing with it well, nor does it mean I am dealing with it particularly badly. But it has changed my psyche somewhat, and not for the better.

If I had a trouble watching content of value before, it has been exacerbated. More and more I need light and fluffy, often dumb and easily digested.

Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts, 2019, Dreamworks/Netflix

I am surprised I am not seeing the Internet talk about this series more, and comparing it to the ultra-nostalgic D&D origins RPG called Gamma World. Ask any GreyBeard D&D player (from the 70s & 80s) and they probably remember and/or have strong nostalgic feelings for Gamma World. Or maybe it was just me.

The game was a Post-Apocalyptic world, once of mutated animals & humans, mixed technologies and mysterious ruins of the ancients to explore. The beasts were often weird hybrids of existing creatures, giant versions of what is around now, or even walking & talking people versions. The world was dangerous, deadly and the game never lent itself to long-term story telling like D&D or its other offshoots. It also never really took itself too seriously.

Kipo takes place after an unknown apocalypse where a young girl from a burrow -- humans living underground unaware of what's up on the surface (Pure Strain Human) -- is thrust upon the surface after a tragedy. Up there she meets Wolf, a primitive & pragmatic girl in a wolf headdress and a multi-eyed, multi-legged pig she calls mandu (Korean dumpling). She almost immediately runs afoul of some talking frogs in suits, who "drive" a car pulled by a giant dragonfly. And she sees her first MegaMute (Wonderbeast?) a gargantuan bunny with many-everything. As she is a cartoon main character, she embraces everything gleefully despite the danger Wolf says is ever present.

Each episode introduces more people and more mutated creatures of the surface, while tossing out the classic "explore the ruins" aspects of all PA fiction. And being a cartoon, we can ignore the logical hiccups that come with Cheetoes not being stale and the pop still having fizz. Also, everyone speaks English.  This show could so easily be retro-fitted into a Gamma World  campaign, that I am surprised there isn't a homebrew setting already created by someone. And no, that doesn't mean I will be doing so. I have enough RPG stuff I am ignoring.

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, 2020, Showtime/download

The first Penny Dreadful TV series (2014) was about an American cowboy landing in London, England in 1891 where he initially investigates a murder, but ends up in an intrigue that includes encounters with Victor Frankenstein, Mina Harker & Dracula, Dorian Grey, Jekyll & Hyde and many other figures from Victorian horror fiction. It was a fun series with a dark, enigmatic supernatural focus. I did not write about it.

This series may be a spin-off but it (so far) has very little to do with the parent series. For one, it is set in Los Angeles, 1938 and does not have any cast members from horror fiction. What it is, is a bleak supernatural tale about a battle between two spirits: Santa Muerta, Mexican spirit of death (in the benevolent shepherd to the afterlife aspect), and her "sister", the demon Magda. Magda wishes to prove that mankind is irredeemable, while Santa Muerte believes in an goodness inherent to all. To that effect, Magda appears in many forms to many people (but always as a version of actress Natalie Dormer) influencing them to make the worst decisions. We get racial tensions between the Mexicans of California, and the establishment. We get the growing influence of Nazism in America, before they were even involved in WWII. And we get faith vs religion.

The performances are wonderful, and every episode has been very enthralling. But its so fucking bleak, and one cannot but believe that Magda is entirely correct. Her influence is minimal, but people are such terrible terrible beings. And considering what's going on outside our windows right now, primarily in the US, but truly, all over the world, I am not entirely sure I want my fiction to so terribly reflect this reality. I need a break from it.

Tales from the Loop, 2020, Amazon

And that is why I returned to watching this series. Not sure why I am in a Returned state, as everything about this show strikes me as being entirely written for me. The show began its life as a series of artbooks by Swedish illustrator Simon Stålenhag. His paintings are haunting scenes of the Swedish countryside in the 80s or 90s, with otherworldly, alternate timeline technologies inserted. Robots, fusion reactors, abandoned massive structures, etc. dominate quiet winter countrysides dotted with children.

The art books evolved into a table-top RPG (think playing the kids from Stranger Things but with robots instead of monsters) and then into this series from Amazon. I was not sure how they would translate the imagery into a story, but in the few episodes I have watched, they have captured not only the impossible technology but also the quiet emptiness. If I was to create film or TV, this is what I would create: quiet, lovingly put together character pieces full of nostalgia for something that never happened. I love the look and the style, and the only reason I have not become entirely wrapped up in it, is due what I started this post saying -- lack of ability to focus when focus is required.