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beccatoriaFolks, I have reached the wall and apparently the wall is when I have to stay at work until 8 to take minutes for the world's. most. boring. board. meeting. ever. It was all the bloody budget stuff that I don't understand and sounds horribly dire and did I mention never, ever ends? OY. I also accidentally convinced half the board I'm some kind of numbers genius by blurting out the answer to a tricky sum when they were all reaching for their calculators. It was a tactical error: now they're all trying to foist extra accounts-related admin duties on me, and I'm not even THAT good at maths. I was just super bored and doing all the sums in my head in an effort to STAY AWAKE. So I was probably working on the sum a good ten seconds longer than they realised. All in all not one of the better ways I've spent an evening.
Um.
Wait, yes. Vidding.
I R TIRED. I'm also a little surprised it took me this long to crash out.
But never fear, interested parties, I imagine vidding will resume tomorrow, or maybe the next day. NaViMaMo, the vidathon of ridiculous name, lives on!
ALSO FRINGE! Because of all the crazy vidding I haven't had the chance to really talk about Fringe, so I will, a bit, now:
OLIVIA YOU BREAK MY HEART. I'm pleasantly surprised by the speed at which they had Olivia remember who she was, etc. I was honestly worried we'd see her very passive and behaving more like Altlivia than Ourlivia and that hasn't happened. I still wish it had been more overt from the start, but I like that she is at least remembering on her own since it's made clear that Peter is a manifestation of her subconscious, etc.
On the Peter front, I still find myself unable to ship him and Olivia. I think partly this has to do with previous negative experiences with main female characters getting into relationships with main male characters, but also just because I love their chemistry as faux-siblings.
This is mainly annoying not because I might have to sit through a romantic plotline I'm not hugely invested in - as long as they don't make Olivia take second place, that's not a dealbreaker. The problem is I AM now interested in the chemistry between Peter and Altlivia. And there are two ways Fringe could go with this once Olivia gets back: awesome and interesting or horrible and drawn out. I think there are some genuinely fascinating stories they could tell here, without hitting any of my traditional (and powerful) love triangle squicks.
I guess, bluntly, I can see it as an opportunity to really amplify that aspect of Olivia I find fascinating - her quiet loneliness: I can't see her pining even if she's deeply hurt. Bluntly, her MANPAIN, which I adore. I would be very interested in seeing Olivia quietly, firmly, heartbreakingly, but not without understanding, put some distance between her and Peter in the wake of this for an appreciable amount of time. To treat Peter, in some measure, the way she treats Walter after realising what he did to her. Obviously not really in the same league, and with a lot more understandable reasons behind it, but in some ways, it's a far more personal betrayal, even if it's tied up in the fact she lost the chance to be that more vibrant, more whole, version of herself because of what Walter did.
As a separate issue I'd be pretty fascinated if Peter chose Altlivia permanently and irrevocably. I don't entirely expect that to happen, but I think it would be kind of amazing if it did, just because I genuinely believe that he finds her more his type. Like, I can see them together more easily. It's a painful, horrible thing for the show to say to Olivia: you are damaged, he loves you better the other way.
But I also don't really think that the show can cop out of the fact that Peter noticed Olivia changed and liked it. Like, for me, that's the bigger issue here, really, than him not noticing she'd been doppelgangered (though obviously that's pretty enormous). Because Olivia was acting...pretty different. A lot like Peter would, in fact (you know, minus the murder!). And Peter preferred it.
Nina Sharp twigged there was something up with Olivia in one scene. It's stuff like that that suddenly makes me think, maybe the show isn't just being lazy. Maybe it's making a point.
Maybe I won't hate this imminent love triangle.
Maybe this imminent love triangle will be about how two people don't really fit together.
Who knows. Fringe always does this to me. It throws out stuff that could be amazing and could be awful. And mostly it ends up on the more amazing of the sides, but sometimes you have to sit through some really...on the edge of that balance stuff to get there. It's never fallen into the fail category, which makes me feel I should be more charitable, but it's also always making me worry in a way that I think is at least partly down to its execution. Like, it never betrays my trust, but it's always asking me for advances on it. Which makes me feel nervous about it and unfair to it at the same time.
AND YET, I'm still glued to my screen. And really worried and hoping it gets renewed for next season.
On the mythology front...okay, just...two things:
1) Ancient technologically advanced people who built a giant doomsday device? Yup, that's awesome pseudo science!
2) Wait, what, before the dinosaurs?! That's at least 65 million years ago. That essentially means that humans evolved twice independently of each other? Or like, we just have zero fossil record of them when we have fossil record of ever damn other thing? DAMMIT. I like pseudo science ! I can even come up with explanations about how there must still be First People around (like say, Sam Weiss, the mysterious bowling man and author of the Victorian era book about First People?) and that explains why I don't have to ask questions about continental drift, because probably more contemporary First People used those sacred numbers to make co-ordinates in which to bury those things. I can even pseudo science handwave the idea that even though they must have been buried as long as number stations (i.e. Marconi), the machine is somehow hardwired for Peter's DNA. Because screw it, time travel and Observers are involved.
But, PEOPLE LIVING BEFORE THE DINOSAURS? CHRIST ON A BIKE, SHOW. That's a suspension of disbelief too far.
Honestly, humans evolved like 150k years ago or whatever and we know there was a significant evolutionary development in terms of speech, art and culture about 50k years ago. Yet we really have no records of civilisations beyond about 10k years ago, and like...a handful of hunter gatherer remains from 30k ago in the ice age, which is also about when we assume agriculture started.
There are gaps in that record many times longer than our entire recorded history, for a crazy advance human culture to have invented weird shit and then mysteriously destroyed themselves while leaving no trace.
AND YET WE GET DINOSAURS.
Sam Weiss, ladies and gentlemen; as a child he rode a pterodactyl to school. And brings WHOLE NEW LEVELS OF MEANING to my icon. Which is, for the first time, actually contextually relevant. *facepalm*
Um.
Wait, yes. Vidding.
I R TIRED. I'm also a little surprised it took me this long to crash out.
But never fear, interested parties, I imagine vidding will resume tomorrow, or maybe the next day. NaViMaMo, the vidathon of ridiculous name, lives on!
ALSO FRINGE! Because of all the crazy vidding I haven't had the chance to really talk about Fringe, so I will, a bit, now:
OLIVIA YOU BREAK MY HEART. I'm pleasantly surprised by the speed at which they had Olivia remember who she was, etc. I was honestly worried we'd see her very passive and behaving more like Altlivia than Ourlivia and that hasn't happened. I still wish it had been more overt from the start, but I like that she is at least remembering on her own since it's made clear that Peter is a manifestation of her subconscious, etc.
On the Peter front, I still find myself unable to ship him and Olivia. I think partly this has to do with previous negative experiences with main female characters getting into relationships with main male characters, but also just because I love their chemistry as faux-siblings.
This is mainly annoying not because I might have to sit through a romantic plotline I'm not hugely invested in - as long as they don't make Olivia take second place, that's not a dealbreaker. The problem is I AM now interested in the chemistry between Peter and Altlivia. And there are two ways Fringe could go with this once Olivia gets back: awesome and interesting or horrible and drawn out. I think there are some genuinely fascinating stories they could tell here, without hitting any of my traditional (and powerful) love triangle squicks.
I guess, bluntly, I can see it as an opportunity to really amplify that aspect of Olivia I find fascinating - her quiet loneliness: I can't see her pining even if she's deeply hurt. Bluntly, her MANPAIN, which I adore. I would be very interested in seeing Olivia quietly, firmly, heartbreakingly, but not without understanding, put some distance between her and Peter in the wake of this for an appreciable amount of time. To treat Peter, in some measure, the way she treats Walter after realising what he did to her. Obviously not really in the same league, and with a lot more understandable reasons behind it, but in some ways, it's a far more personal betrayal, even if it's tied up in the fact she lost the chance to be that more vibrant, more whole, version of herself because of what Walter did.
As a separate issue I'd be pretty fascinated if Peter chose Altlivia permanently and irrevocably. I don't entirely expect that to happen, but I think it would be kind of amazing if it did, just because I genuinely believe that he finds her more his type. Like, I can see them together more easily. It's a painful, horrible thing for the show to say to Olivia: you are damaged, he loves you better the other way.
But I also don't really think that the show can cop out of the fact that Peter noticed Olivia changed and liked it. Like, for me, that's the bigger issue here, really, than him not noticing she'd been doppelgangered (though obviously that's pretty enormous). Because Olivia was acting...pretty different. A lot like Peter would, in fact (you know, minus the murder!). And Peter preferred it.
Nina Sharp twigged there was something up with Olivia in one scene. It's stuff like that that suddenly makes me think, maybe the show isn't just being lazy. Maybe it's making a point.
Maybe I won't hate this imminent love triangle.
Maybe this imminent love triangle will be about how two people don't really fit together.
Who knows. Fringe always does this to me. It throws out stuff that could be amazing and could be awful. And mostly it ends up on the more amazing of the sides, but sometimes you have to sit through some really...on the edge of that balance stuff to get there. It's never fallen into the fail category, which makes me feel I should be more charitable, but it's also always making me worry in a way that I think is at least partly down to its execution. Like, it never betrays my trust, but it's always asking me for advances on it. Which makes me feel nervous about it and unfair to it at the same time.
AND YET, I'm still glued to my screen. And really worried and hoping it gets renewed for next season.
On the mythology front...okay, just...two things:
1) Ancient technologically advanced people who built a giant doomsday device? Yup, that's awesome pseudo science!
2) Wait, what, before the dinosaurs?! That's at least 65 million years ago. That essentially means that humans evolved twice independently of each other? Or like, we just have zero fossil record of them when we have fossil record of ever damn other thing? DAMMIT. I like pseudo science ! I can even come up with explanations about how there must still be First People around (like say, Sam Weiss, the mysterious bowling man and author of the Victorian era book about First People?) and that explains why I don't have to ask questions about continental drift, because probably more contemporary First People used those sacred numbers to make co-ordinates in which to bury those things. I can even pseudo science handwave the idea that even though they must have been buried as long as number stations (i.e. Marconi), the machine is somehow hardwired for Peter's DNA. Because screw it, time travel and Observers are involved.
But, PEOPLE LIVING BEFORE THE DINOSAURS? CHRIST ON A BIKE, SHOW. That's a suspension of disbelief too far.
Honestly, humans evolved like 150k years ago or whatever and we know there was a significant evolutionary development in terms of speech, art and culture about 50k years ago. Yet we really have no records of civilisations beyond about 10k years ago, and like...a handful of hunter gatherer remains from 30k ago in the ice age, which is also about when we assume agriculture started.
There are gaps in that record many times longer than our entire recorded history, for a crazy advance human culture to have invented weird shit and then mysteriously destroyed themselves while leaving no trace.
AND YET WE GET DINOSAURS.
Sam Weiss, ladies and gentlemen; as a child he rode a pterodactyl to school. And brings WHOLE NEW LEVELS OF MEANING to my icon. Which is, for the first time, actually contextually relevant. *facepalm*
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 10:37 pm (UTC)BASICALLY. A+ for lulz, but omg what.
And yes, agree, I'm so glad Olivia's arc is progressing nicely rather than lots of awkward dramatic irony etc. But I share your nerves about the Altlivia-Peter-Olivia fiasco, ick. Not to mention that mostly I am fretting because I want everyone to be okay in both universes! *bites nails* Possibly I am a little over-invested; it is a problem that I have.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 10:36 pm (UTC)I also empathise ENTIRELY with your over-investment problem. I think a good portion of the reason why I'm not as head over heels for this show as I probably would be otherwise is being burrrrrrrrrned by getting over-invested in BSG so now I'm afraid to get over-invested in Fringe but I can't help but get that way, and thus I just end up being preemptively pessimistic. ALAS. I WANT EVERYONE TO BE OKAY IN BOTH UNIVERSES TOO.
Except I might want Scarlie to come over and live in this universe. Just a bit.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 11:05 pm (UTC)I want Peter to have been playing Fauxlivia and for her to DIE IN A FIRE (or, in my perfect, perfect world be switched BACK and then spend the rest of her life being tortured and experimented on by Walternate because HE CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. And yes, before you ask, I totally wrote that fic). And then I want Ourlivia to be VERY UPSET for a while, and be angry at Peter and for him to be all kinds of Gallant and Patient and whatnot, and then they'll live happily ever after solving crazy mysteries from a basement lab in Harvard.
This is probably why I am not a famous TV Executive like JJ Abrams.
Everything else you said is spot on. I would like a dinosaur. On top of everything else. But not one that is going to eat me.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 12:29 am (UTC)Yikes! As
no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 01:12 am (UTC)What I mean, mostly, is that I want Fauxlivia to be evil. Mustache twirling, maniacal laughter having, kitten drowning evil. For some reason, I want this show to be Black and White, possibly because WALTER (and Nina) are already giving me as much Gray as I can handle. I don't know. It's weird and I am not good at explaining it.
I don't even really (at this point) want Peter and Olivia to get (back?) together. I think they're past it. I'm pretty sure I am, in any case.
(I will mention also that messy sexual consent is a SERIOUS SQUICK of mine, one of the few things I will actually turn off the TV to avoid. So all of my ideas about this are coloured by that.)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 10:44 pm (UTC)See, I still like Altlivia! I get that she's not necessarily an easy character to like, and I take your point about your personal limit of Grey, but I think, for me, I'm relieved she's not pure mustache twirling evil, mainly because that means there's no pure mustache twirling evil in Ourlivia. Like, I don't know how I'd react to that being a possible thing that exists somewhere in her?
But I could deal with a pure evil Walter much easier (I mean eviler even than Walternate, in whom we see occasional sparks of compassion or self-reflection and with regard to whom we at least have a lot of information on WHY he became how he is). Mainly because I'm already comfortable with the fact there's a really twisted, cruel, dark side to Walter; it's in his character, so I can see that extended out to the mustache twirling villain?
I tell you what, maybe every time I like Altlivia, I can put on a some fake mustachios and twirl them and laugh maniacally? If it would make you feel more comfortable? Or you felt like providing me with an excuse to wear fake mustachios and pretend to have an evil scheme? ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 10:54 pm (UTC)Only if you promise to take pictures. ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 12:08 am (UTC)You've actually given me some hope that they won't do horrible love triangle stuff? Because I find the idea that Olivia will simply put distance between herself and Peter to be...very Olivia and very likely. So it just depends on how strung-out it is during the resolution of the whole two Olivias thing, and what that resolution is? (If there's an immediate Olivia/Peter reunion, I'll HURL but I...actually don't think that will happen).
It's a painful, horrible thing for the show to say to Olivia: you are damaged, he loves you better the other way.
Because I actually could like this story quite a lot, in theory, for both Olivia *and* Peter. Though not just, you're damaged, I love you better the other way, though that's the flip side, but, I've never seen anyone who can do the things you do and you are hard to know that way, you are hard to love that way, I don't understand you that way. You are easier for me to understand in this undamaged, less complicated way, because I have not seen the things that you have seen. Like the difference between the way Charley Dixon looked at Sarah Connor, and not Sarah Reese, not with judgment necessarily, but a profound uncrossable distance because it's just that...one of them has to go save the world, and that shit is complicated. And I still love the gender reversal of that.
And I think that affirms both awesome loner superhero stuff about Olivia, but also in character things for Peter? Peter, after all, started out here for the people he loves, for Walter and then for Olivia; it's Olivia who's here to SAVE THE WORLD. I LIKED Peter fine like that; we remember this. I did not like all the increasing efforts to make him Narratively Important, and now even more so with the Peter-powered world-exploding whatever, because given how they started out, it's never not going to feel like someone went, hey give the young white guy some angst and something to do, will you, you let the girl look like the lead for a season and a half. I miss the show that wasn't afraid of having the main young white dude be the understanding support system for the complicated, quiet damaged girl with manpain who didn't broadcast her feelings and the ambiguous, terrifying, childlike broken old man. So in a lot of ways, it's only partly the fear of love triangle; like I think we talked about at the end of season 2, it's *timing*. It's that the ship is happening when they are switched Olivias and ours was locked up, that its happening when the big mytharcy story is about a Peter-powered world-exploding whatever.
But given that Peter is a main character also, and not Charley Dixon, I'm just...afraid that there's no way they go here. That precludes the story I want, unless he chooses Altlivia. Because even if Olivia justifiably puts some distance between them, obviously there's no reset button. Unless Peter chooses Altlivia--and I agree, that could be amazing, that could be the most surprising thing Fringe has ever done if they do it, though I don't expect them to either--it's always, always going to feel like the show's just biding its time with other stuff before getting them back together because they belong together. Peter will get world-savey and angsty too, and get narrative-stealing cooties all over Olivia, and then they'll be equal. And OMG right here, I want to say "I know that's an overstatement and it won't ever just be about the ship for Olivia" but then the little Laura Roslin angel pops into my head, and :( Oh BSG, RUINING ALL THE SHOWS FOREVER. And thus this ramble ends, as all rambles should, with: Fuck you, BSG.
ETA: Annnnd poking around as I haven't done really, like, ever, I now see that the theory that Peter is playing Altlivia is quite prevalent? Idk why but I...am not sure I want that. Your way is so much more interesting to me!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 10:52 pm (UTC)I feel bad for not like, writing more, but there really isn't anything to add except wow that's a brilliantly succinct way of putting it. Though I do share your fear that they won't make their main character a Charley Dixon and your frustration that whenever they give him Storylines, I feel it's just some TV exec somewhere trying to force him into a more front and centre storyline than the character needs/works well with, but equally I'm not sure how much of that is just due to Previous Bitter.
Especially since even though Peter has a doomsday device coded to him and was stolen from another universe, so far the lion's share of the plot and angst about both those things has gone to Walter and Olivia. Even now when Peter's trying to pursue the weapon and Walter doesn't want him to, it's been a subplot running through a series of episodes that are about two versions of Olivia. Maybe I should be more optimistic.
But...I find myself being a moderately-sized wet napkin like you, yet unable to not be excited at the possibility of them doing something amazing, even as I'm too pessimistic to believe they will. GO ME. *facepalm*. ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-19 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 11:01 pm (UTC)... actually something like this is serious enough that it could put me off the whole show.
I'm a bit pedantic about pre-history.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 10:57 pm (UTC)I kind of like the idea he's well-meaning but oblivious myself, even if I don't quite understand it because he's supposed to be a genius.
I guess I also like it because, perhaps a little pettily, I like when the narrative doesn't elevate Peter and I was waaaaay more nervous about that than usual once they got all romantic with the two of them because that would have been unfortunate timing. So I think I'm mostly just thrilled it doesn't look like they're going down the route of having Peter bravely Solve Everything.