babydraco | Entries tagged with kings

Someone did a Kings fanvid to One Day More. It's pretty good. There are other stories that are better parallels, but the vidder really has made it work.
I mean, you giggle a little at Jack being Eponine because he totally is but it's still funny, and you picture him wandering a darkened street belting out "On My Own" and you start to feel a bit more sober then you remember "A Little Fall of Rain". Now it's not funny at all.

There's a TJ Hammond vid to "I Dreamed a Dream" which is also pretty good, but I'd really love to do that one for Jack too. OMG do I want to. I could have that done in less than two weeks.

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It's not just that they are obviously fans of the original story and did their research well. I think they also read all the various novelizations and watched what exists on film and maybe even dipped into fanfic. I swear I've read that "locked in a room til you produce a kid" scenario in one of the novel adaptations but it's been awhile and it wasn't Jonathan who got locked up.

And check out their detailed worldbuilding. It includes the weather patterns and mentions that they're on the metric system and love soccer.

"Indigenous foods: turkey, white-tailed deer venison, potatoes, corn, and squash." Those are 99 percent indigenous North American foods. So I don't know if that answers the "Where are we?" question.

When Silas takes David to see his Secret Other Family, David bonds with little Seth. Silas and Helen watch them and comment that Seth has "found a new friend". Considering which Biblical character Seth is based on (he grows up to try and seize the crown and fails, so so badly) this is amusing.

( 21-27 )
On the first page of our story
The future seemed so bright
Then the saint turned out so evil
I don't know why i'm still surprised
Even angels have their wicked schemes
And you take that to new extremes
But you'll always be my hero
Even though you've lost your mind
-Skyler Grey, "Love the Way You Lie" (original recording).

She had Katrina Ghent painted out of the Ministry group portrait. This is before Katrina tried to marry Jack, she instantly sets out to destroy any woman in Shiloh's government who seems strong enough to gather a power base on her own.
She practically admits she had Katrina killed.
She's cruelly blunt to Katrina's replacement, the kind but slow witted Lucinda, telling her to her face that she's nothing but a baby making machine.
She obviously knew, or suspected, Jack was gay, mothers almost always do, and we see her trying to manipulate his public image to come off as a ladies man. But she didn't realize he was actually having serious relationships like a grownup person. So she assumed that Joseph was a trick out to take advantage of their family. But when she tells Jack that Joseph killed himself, and Jack freaks and blurts out that he and Joseph were really really serious, Susanna Thompson inflects her voice with creeping horror and insists that it's not possible. It's entirely possible that Joseph did not kill himself, Jack's mother had him bumped off. In that moment, she's realizing that her attempt to protect Jack only hurt him more.
Before she has that scene with Jack, though, she has all of Shiloh's mail confiscated so her people can find Joseph's video.
While Silas is distraught about Michelle being on her deathbed, the kingdom is ready to go to war. The war council is waiting for a final decision, but Silas is in no position to make one. Queen Rose walks in with a “letter from the king” authorizing a declaration of war.
After Silas is shot, Rose steals the official crown and hides it so her son can't have a true coronation. Then she greets Silas in Unity Hall, carrying the crown.
When Silas has clearly gone insane, Queen Rose immediately takes over.

I am aware that Kings has its ridiculous side. Viewed from a certain perspective, the whole thing could easily turn into complete hilarity. But that's what makes it good. Because all the best stuff out there has a certain element of absurd, "I can't believe I'm watching this" cheese. If it doesn't, it's usually because the story you're watching is boring, and unoriginal, because the people who made it were too afraid to go for what they wanted or too unimaginative to think about it. If there's nothing to make fun of even a little bit, no one will care at all.

And nothing is perfect. I may mock Gossip Girl for their bizarre view of time and space but the kiss of death for me, for a show, is when I can't even bother criticizing it. Notice there haven't been any Glee or SPN posts from me in a while...

( I got a lot of problems with you people )

Silas says, in “Insurrection” that he had Michelle “chipped” at five. Was he kidding, or serious? Because if Silas...has tracking devices implanted in his children, this changes so many people's fan fics. And explains why Jack doesn't run while he has the chance (besides the fact that he's suicidal). And that this is a world where parents do this to their kids, another moment exposing the truth that this is a far darker world than it appears to be at first.

In the original pilot script (I had to look it up because I needed it for a fic) Michelle and David have sex, or something close, twice. Once up against an ice cream truck (wrongly reported by some fans as in an ice cream truck, which is way funnier). In the pilot that actually aired, they only kiss, they don't have sex until The Sabbath Queen. Also, in the pilot, there's actual swearing. Not a flood of profanities but about three instances of words you cannot say on network tv, which makes me think they really did intend to pitch this to cable first.

( 9-20 )

As I said, the writers and set designers are clearly fans of this story, and scholars who did their homework.

( points one through eight )

I wanna genderflip Kings. I wanna try girl!Jack. With or without girl!David...I'll see if I'm in the mood to write lesbians.

Wouldn't girl!Jack just be Michelle since they're twins? No, because Michelle is not only a wildly different personality, she's also totally different from the way she is in the original text. Let's genderflip them both and see what happens- although you might be able to argue they already were in contrast to their Biblical versions. After all, Michelle is a much softer, kinder, more supportive version of Michal, while Jack is angry and unhappy and snarky and suffers an unfair amount of retribution for wanting the people he loves to have at least a token respect for his feelings and opinions.

It makes everything that happens to Jack on the show three times more disturbing, really, if he's genderflipped. OMG. Is thinking that sexist, though? Or am I right on the money that it'd all be even harder to watch?

I made her some outfits

This would be her song

Edit: I have a subTumblr for Kings screencaps that I'm pairing with goofy quotes from other shows.

it's here

( The finale )

So...Kings. Been rewatching it because I need inspiration for a project.

Man...one of the best shows to get cancelled in its first season *ever*. I wish I'd tried harder to convince people to watch it but I don't think, at the time, I appreciated how important of a show it actually was.

It's a *better* show if you appreciate it for what it is, not whether or not it adheres to the original story enough. But also, it actually *does*, more than you'd think at first. The writers and show runners were *fans* and *scholars* and it's loaded with Fridge Brilliance and callbacks to the original. I'll tackle that in my third post.

( Retroactive Thoughts on Book!Jonathan versus TV!Jon )

Snow White and the Huntsman takes place in the same universe as The Chronicles of Narnia. Only it didn't really end so happily (Neil Gaiman already got halfway there, apparently the prince in Snow, Glass, Apples is inspired by embraced the dark side!Edmund Pevensie). Both movies have a similar production design and both stories have a complex and elegant combination of Christian allegory and European pagan mythology.

The last queen of Narnia before Jadis was called “Swanwhite”. Perhaps she was Snow's daughter or descendent...or in “reality”, this story ended very, very badly. We don't really know how Jadis conquered Narnia and it's implied in “Huntsman” that Ravenna relies on illusion to trick the king into marrying her.

In “Huntsman”, the way Ravenna is running the kingdom is turning it into a non functioning place. She either doesn't know how to, or doesn't care about, sustaining the economy and populace in order to continue ruling it. Whatever people are left are probably going to pack up and leave for less nightmarish pastures. In the first Narnia story, there are no visible humans in Narnia, in fact, most of the animals they meet have never seen one. So since it is revealed in subsequent books that humans do exist in that world, where were they when the Pevensies first arrived? Well, they probably fled to more hospitable places when Jadis came.

Or they're different countries but Ravenna and Jadis are part of the same race.

If it doesn't take place on another planet, “Kings” could conceivably take place in the same universe as The Hunger Games. It's implied to be taking place in North America but all of the place names are different and apparently, they're still recovering from some sort of traumatic cataclysm. On “Kings” they have 21st century technology but they also have an absolute monarchy...in a clearly North American setting. The Hunger Games takes place much further into the future, at a time when North American society has collapsed so much that they don't even know that they used to be something else instead of thirteen districts, yet they also have even more advanced technology. It's the result of a terrible war, but Suzanne Collins doesn't tell us what the war was about, only that they're all being punished for it. People in the Capitol tend to have Roman names and their entire culture is meant to be a riff on the decadent Roman Empire.

Panem is King's version of America-Standing-in-for-Israel after it's conquered by their universe's version of Rome.

Oh, btw, the same guy who directed Kings is the director for Catching Fire.