SoCS key — 08.20.22

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “key.” Use it as a noun, a verb, or use it metaphorically. Have fun!

Thank goodness this is a stream of consciousness, because I have three tributaries to merge into one stream. I’m getting there, I’m getting there…

Stream one: Remember when a tv series would run its season and then you’d have to watch reruns all summer until the fall shows started? Remember how we all got excited about being able to binge watch a whole season in one day? Then what happens? The production for a new season takes a year, if you are lucky, and sometimes much longer than that. You binge your show in a day or two and then you have to remember wtf happened, for a full year, without the reminders of reruns. If you can. Some of us can’t. We end up rewatching, binging that season again just so we can feel caught up to the new season we’re going to binge. The third season comes around? Now you have to binge two seasons, again, so you can watch the third. Or possibly that’s just me and my horrid memory.

Stream two: I never was all that interested in “weird” fiction, which for the sake of this post I’m defining as fantasy with magic, strange creatures, and please nerds, don’t kill me, for this short stream I’m lumping in science fiction. No, I don’t need the pedantic lecture in comments, please! 🙂 That’s just to say, I liked my fiction in this world. Historical fiction was fine. I read Lord of the Rings, enjoyed it, but that was about it for any kind of fantasy fiction.

Then about 12 years ago, I met my best friend, and he likes all kinds of fiction. I think he first suggested I watch The Walking Dead. I really liked it. Then he suggested other books, and before you know it, I’m hooked. That’s about all I read these days, something with at least a fantasy tinge to it.

The main stream of the prompt: Because of “stream one” I’m having to binge watch two seasons of a show in order to feel caught up to the new season just released on August 10. The show is Locke and Key. Aha, key, there you go, the prompt. Whew. You thought I’d never get here.

Locke and Key is a Netflix original, and the first season came out in 2020, the second in 2021, and now the third, and declared final, season was just released. The synopsis, from Wikipedia is: After Rendell Locke is murdered at the hands of former student Sam Lesser, his wife Nina decides to move with her three children, Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode, from Seattle to Matheson, Massachusetts, and take residence in Rendell’s family home, Keyhouse. The children soon discover a number of mysterious keys throughout the house that can be used to unlock various doors in magical ways. They soon become aware of a demonic entity that is also searching for the keys for its own malevolent purposes.

I loved the idea of the specialized, magical keys. I remember finding the characters and the story compelling. I hope my second round of binge watching matches my memory of the show.

The show may be a Netflix original, but it began its life like another show I’m watching, The Sandman, and that is as a graphic novel or comic. Gaiman classifies The Sandman as a comic and Locke and Key as a graphic novel, and who am I to argue? Locke and Key was created by Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez, and it was originally published in six volumes from 2008-2013. I have to admit to never having read a graphic novel, but I probably should considering how much I like the adaptations.

What I was listening to while writing: