#save dirk gently

[biscuitfeatures]

Just finished rewatching Dirk Gently. It’s funny: Netflix have left it up all this time, but still they’ve never considered funding a third season. What gives? The show is magic. Everything about it is amazing. Even the theme song makes my soul happy. It is an absolute tragedy that it never got approved for a third season. I think about poor Bart, realising she’s walked into a horrible trap. And Amanda - what kind of adventures did she go on to have? Did Todd and Farah make a go of things? What about Dirk - how do things change for him after talking to The Boy and getting some answers to his biggest questions about self-identity??

So now I’m spamming Netflix with title suggestions for third season of DGHDA to allay my distress at being so horribly cut off still.

[miryel89]

Even the sun needs a vacation – a holistic one.

[the-chosen-half-of-one]

If I had a nickel for every time a cool, unique show I liked was cancelled before its natural end, I’d have AT LEAST 12-13 nickels, which actually is a lot, goddammit, this is some kind of conspiracy created by the nickel company to release more nickels

[alexjcrowley]

Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency is just peak aromantic representation. That's exactly how aros spend the time they don't dedicate to romance: acting as tools for the chaotic functioning of the universe, solving cases about time travel and magic kingdoms and just destroying things with their friends. Hope this helps non aro people out there to understand us better.

[cringefaillosersummit]

Round 1 - Group 7B

Submission notes under cut. Some submissions had notes others did not:

Bart Curlish:

Lives in filth and blood. Just goes around killing people and has no idea how to live life. Has no emotional literacy, but that’s not on her she was raised as an experiment in a government facility.

Look at her. She’s grimy and never takes a bath and doesn’t know what friends are and kills everyone she sees

Sha Hualing:

Went from one of the top three wives in the original book to underpaid secretary of the same dude. AND was forced into a front seat of his insane love life (him spending 5 years trying to resurrect his dead teacher whos also his gay crush). Also at some point she tried to prove that the girl who is considered extremely beautiful aint shit, tore off her veil, and promptly Screamed. That wasn't really explained further in the book, but fandom consensus diagnosed this as a gay panic moment.

the most bisexual disaster cringefail pathetic girl you have ever met. she literally screamed in the face of the girl she immediately caught feelings for. i love my failwife so bad

[filthy-lil-bugger]

HOLY SHIT LOOK WHAT I FOUND AT MY HALF PRICE BOOKS!!!!!!!

[clumsyvi]

The fact that over the years i keep fixating on tv shows with small fandom is killing me, why do i do that to myself ?

[stealingthings]

The top shows that were cut too early and I would sell my soul to revive are, in no particular order:

Lockwood and co

The owl house

Agent Carter

Dirk Gently's holistic detective agency

Firefly (I haven't personally seen it but I know how passionate some of you are about it and I really want that for you)

[fangirls-just-want-to-have-fun]

Another year gone by, another year with no new season of Julie and the Phantoms, Ever After High, Dirk Gently, Inside Job, or Infinity Train

[urlocallesbiab]

a dghda s2/s3 theory: the universe meant for amanda to become an omniscient master of backstage knowledge, and friedkin took that place instead of her through a series of mistakes

(this post gets Very Long, but you can scroll right to the end for a TL;DR)

now, allow me to provide some context before i delve into an explanation

first, a precursory theory: if suzie boreton died like she was meant to, then lord triangle badevil would have became the mage's apprentice

in s2ep1 bart makes a choice not to kill suzie, even though she feels like she should; and then throughout the season the fact that suzie isn't meant to be a part of things is alluded to:

1) in the end of s2ep8 dirk gives his usual Case Solved speech where he explains how everything is connected, but he doesn't know how suzie boreton figures into things; she's not, technically, a part of his case

2) in s2ep10 todd asks her who is she and why is she there, and accuses her of being "some mom from montana", which further drives the point home

3) king francis has no knowledge of her either, even though he seems to be able to know relevant things that he could neither witness nor hear about (like farah and tina defeating the mage)

so, suzie's boreton entire character arc exists by mistake; and yet the prophecy (as foretold by wakti wapnasi, and as spoken by panto trost in s2ep3) makes a point about the great dark wizard finding his apprentice — that means that role was meant for someone.

lord triangle badevil is a mysterious figure who plays a significant role in the plot (his men kidnap farson and later amanda in s2ep4, he kills farson and thus causes a massive shoot-out in s2ep7, and he kills some people in his attempts to stop the prophecy in eps 9 and 10), and yet we know infuriatingly little about him, his goals and his views, like he was meant to be explored but got forgotten about.

he has markings on his face (pitch-black with negative-space geometrical figures) which are never discussed, but seem to be the same sort of marks that appear on arms of both the mage and suzie boreton from magic overuse, and that seems to suggest that he is, in some way, a magic user, or at least was exposed to magic somehow.

all things considered, i propose that lord triangle badevil, a mysterious actor of evil and supposedly a magic user, was meant to be the prophecied apprentice & the big bad, but got displaced by suzie, who wound up in the narrative by mistake.

next, an observation: wendimoor's magic, pararibulitis and backstage are closely linked

it's not much of a novel revelation, but i'm trying to be thorough, so here

— both amanda&todd and later friedkin could access backstage through the magical portals between earth and wendimoor

— most powerful beings of wendimoor (wakti wapnasi, the great witch; king francis) seem to be omniscient or close to, and omniscience is a backstage characterestic

(they both know things about earth they shouldn't be able to know, like wakti about amanda's name, or francis about farah&tina's win over the mage; and metaphysical things that are nigh impossible to be logically derived from facts, like holistics being the tools to fix the broken universe)

— pararibulitis expresses itself as tangible magic within wendimoor, and is tied to wielding the water/portals and to the visions

— visions are also a form of mystical knowledge, and thus could be sourced from backstage

(the exact reasons of how/why the connection between wendimoor and backstage could've happened have no bearing on this post, but so far my working theory is that the explosive creation of a whole new layer of reality pushed at the borders of the universe and stretched them/thinned them out, and that's why it's easier to slip from the material world of the universe to the immaterial not-world of the backstage when in wendimoor)

now, a couple of tidbits about amanda and the mandelbrot set:

— her name, amanda brotzman, is a pun on "mandelbrot set" (the showrunner talked about this somewhere; i don't know the source, i've learned about this somewhere in the ao3 comment section)

— mandelbrot set's visualisation is the shape that appears in people's eyes when they're backstage

— it's the same shape as on amanda's s2 jacket

— it's a recurring shape in her visions

(a tangent: now, i don't know much about mathematics so forgive me if i get the words wrong, but mandelbrot set's boundary is a fractal curve, meaning that if you zoom into the mandelbrot set's visualisation's border, you'll find more of the same shape, ad infinitum. this fun quality of the set has no bearing on this specific post and theories within it, but i think such a plot-important shape having this "as above, so below" flair to it could have meaning for the pontetial s3 plot)

— the prophecy mentions she-who-sees-all who was supposed to open a door into a dream, allowing through it dirk gently and the boy; that most probably references amanda, her visions and her ability to create portals through water

finally, the theory:

— amanda brotzman, mandelbrot set, visions, pararibulitis, wendimoor magic and backstage are all interconnected

— amanda was supposed to be she who sees all; backstage seems to have granted hugo friedkin omniscience

— stangely, amanda didn't see any higher meaning in the stars when she was there, and her eyes were the same color as todd's; when friedkin got there, his eyes were red, and he was enlightened

— there were a couple of things different about how amanda and hugo accessed backstage: amanda got there only mentally while her body was elsewhere, she was there together with todd, and she was alive; hugo's body fell through the portal, he was alone, and he was either dead or dying. any of those things, i think, could be what allowed him to connect to the backstage's knowledge. (my personal interpretation is that it's the part about dying, just to sprinkle more angst and terror into amanda's s3 conflict over it)

— hugo got into that predicament (alone, dying, pushed physically through a portal) because he was grievously wounded by lord badevil; if lord wasn't there, none of that would've happened. and as i have argued above, i believe that lord badevil wasn't supposed to be there! it's a chain reaction of displacement — suzie took lord badevil's place, he ended up killing hugo, and hugo took amanda's place

TL;DR: suzie boreton was never meant to survive bart, she displaced lord triangle badevil as the mage's apprentice, lord wound up on earth and killed hugo, hugo fell through the portal and became the master of the knowledge that amanda was supposed to be, displacing her.

we can suspect that the place was reserved for amanda because of the ties between pararibulitis, magic, her, mandelbrot set and backstage, and because she was canonically refered to as "she who sees all"

[feral--opossum]

Wygar used to be the best swordsman in the land... He didn't take kindly to Panto taking his title.

[miryel89]

[jus-alilcomforblelad]

falling into the abyss of television static like in that one episode

[unpopularshipbracket]

Round 2a Match 3

Shang Qinghua/Noodle Guy (The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System)

fic count: 1

"This is the inherent romanticism of the one person who knows you best, and also of bonding by sharing food. Shang Qinghua (SQH) is a canon character in svsss, and Noodle Guy (Noodle NPC) is an oc made up by someone who thought it would be funny if the person who knew SQH best wasn't a named character but just a random noodle stall owner who listens to his troubles that SQH has been visiting for years. The author made him up, and proceeded to write a fic with THIS summary: "Where a man loves Shang Qinghua for his whole life. It changes nothing." And broke everyone's hearts because how dare this author make us care about Noodle Guy and then make him die with unrequited love HOW DARE"

Bart Curlish/Ken Adams (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency)

fic count: 43

"the series is lowkey about a cosmic battle of order vs chaos which was gearing up for a showdown in season three but then it got cancelled. Bart is very much on the chaos side, she introduces Ken to the world of the supernatural, and then he becomes the leader of the order side. Beautiful, tragic, beautifully tragic."

[clockworkcheetah]

i know it was played more for laughs than anything but i do wonder if todd in 2x01 could have been foreshadowing to how his relationship with dirk would go

like he starts disliking dirk, then liking him, this glimpse into pure madness driven by devotion, to building up their friendship again, to whatever couldve been

and then the mad devotion corrupts him from the inside out

[darkblueboxs]

some of yall may not like this one but. those shows netflix keeps cancelling?

Stop trying to save them.

Stop getting hashtags trending, stop spamming twitter accounts, stop crowdfunding billboards outside Netflix HQ, stop putting your TVs on silent and playing episodes on loop to boost ratings, stop creating petitions and binging shows in one night to fit within the “renewal decision timeline”. PLEASE stop.

Maybe one time in a hundred, this will work. But every time you are guaranteed to be giving priceless free marketing, promotion, attention and screen time to a coorporation that may love having you beg on your hands and knees for their scraps of Entertainment (tm) but will never love you back.

If you are angry that Netflix cancelled something you like, cancel your subscription and tell them why. Taking to social media, streaming the show repeatedly and encouraging others to do the same might make them reconsider the cancellation, but it will definitely encourage them to keep following a business model of making controversial (RE: bad) decisions to gain free publicity and a user base increasingly willing to drop time and cash on broken promises.

Engagement and news coverage will never make Netflix reconsider their practices. No such thing as bad press, right? If you want to see real change, go silent, cut them off and take your money elsewhere.