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beccatoria1. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER! It's slightly more amazing if you are familiar with Tom Waits, but it's still awesome, regardless:
I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO UNSEE IT. I love Tom Waits, but from now on, it will always be Cookie Monster singing.
(Random sidenote, I got a Cookie Monster hand puppet for Christmas when I was about three, it had a hole in the back of the throat so you could make it eat the cookies it came with, and one of my earliest memories is TOTAL CONFUSION when my Dad did that. WHERE DID IT GO? I KNOW THAT'S A PUPPET!)
2. I've been enjoying the DC relaunch but I'm really sad that there's no Marvel family, especially that they're not using the chance to fix that crap they did to Mary Marvel way back when. Anyway, I was also thinking that I miss Stephanie Brown, and thus, I have come up with the BEST TEAMUP COMIC EVER. Seriously if I could draw for shit I would totally draw fake covers, but I can't, so whatever. But there should totally be a comic called: SHAZAM & the Power of Spoiler! (With an exclamation mark - that is a very important part of the title).
It would be set in High School and Billy Batson would be a freshman and Stephanie Brown would be a senior and in their civilian identities, Steph would look after Billy and defend him from bullies but in their superhero identities, Spoiler sidekicks to Captain Marvel. I think the power dynamic switch up would be interesting, especially since the best part of Captain Marvel (my preference is for the version where he actually becomes an adult with the Wisdom of Solomon rather than the version where he sort of shares his body with another consciousness) is the part where he's simultaneously a kid and incredibly wise as an adult, then goes back to being a kid again.
I think that in their human identities, Steph has succeeded in putting her father away, but before she put a stop to his supervillainy, her mother got kidnapped and not even Batman can find her, so Steph's trying to find her on her own, but the trail has gone cold. Meanwhile, she took Billy in off the street, per his origin story and together they use "Captain Marvel" to fake out Family Services that they're living with their Uncle who's a Private Investigator, which is how they make their cash, except they're bad at it because they keep telling their clients not to worry about the charge, or realising that their clients are kinda sleazy and turning them in to the police, all the while patrolling Gotham (much to Batman's fury; he would totally try to convince Captain Marvel that Stephanie Brown was unsuitable sidekick material, and Captain Marvel would be all, "Don't be stupid sheprotects me from bullies and does my homework knows much more about detective work than I do, it's very useful!" and Batman would be all, "Grrr. She learned that from me. ::stinkface::"), and trying to find new leads on Stephanie's mother and Billy's sister.
IT WOULD BE SUPER AMAZING AND YOU ALL KNOW IT.
3. I have really been enjoying the last few episodes of Fringe, and I am really not looking forward to Peter coming back. I don't want to dislike him, I really, really don't. But all the interesting stuff is Olivias and Walters and Peter is the catalyst for so much of it but only ever makes me annoyed when they try to actually include him. I think I may get one more episode max before he comes back, so I will do my best to enjoy tonight's story and hope it has more BAMFlivia action. I really enjoy watching the two of them interact. And Walter is back to being heartbreakingly unstable instead of bordering on functioning enough we can start to hate him again.
4. Oh, Doctor Who. I don't hate you or anything, I'm just sad you weren't more awesome. I was kind of slowly getting on board with the whole Melody Pond thing too but the ending is...well a cop-out really. I know people said that about the last one, and I disagreed vehemently because it was emotionally true. And that's the problem, this one doesn't feel emotionally true. I could overlook the weirdness of River needing to be part Time Lord or needing to be in a suit that was automated or the fact that I kind of figured the Silence stole River as a child from Kovarian and then forced humans to build them a space suit to care for her because they couldn't without frying her brain, but needed humans to do it because they were socially parasitic (as opposed to having sophisticated servants like Kovarian who have spaceships and futuretech) - that Kovarian wanted a brainwashed soldier to defend against the doctor, who was then stolen by ANOTHER faction hell-bent on killing him - *deep breath* - I could even overlook the fact that the Doctor tells River that she won't remember his murder as a brilliant sop to the "why was River lying SO WELL in the season opener" only to have it made clear that she does, in fact, remember that she DID remember during the final scene with Amy.
I could overlook all that stuff if I just felt the emotions were real. But she doesn't really kill him. And she doesn't believe she did either. The show promises us he'll die and he doesn't. Of course he was never really going to, but a timey wimey remembered from the beyond paradoxy recreation of mythicism would have been just as much a plot cheat but not an emotional one. The Doctor has to be in the Tesselecta most of the episode. Why does he make a big deal of not having to face his death alone? He knows he's not going to die. To convince Amy and Rory he's dead? To what purpose, they've already stopped traveling with him. Why does River agree to spend the rest of her life in prison for a crime she didn't actually commit? If she HAD killed him, even with the best reasons in the world, I totally buy her staying there. But this way? It's just...unfair in a way that's unsatisfying.
So many moments that were powerful before - to pick one off the top of my head - "Octavian says you killed a man." "Yes I did." "A good man." "A very good man." The way those lines are delivered, with sudden solemnity and regret but no apology, it's fascinating. Now we know she's lying, well, fine, but 1) why strike that tone rather than avoidance or the playful note she hits a moment later, that's just promising the audience a moment that never gets delivered, and 2) more importantly, at a certain point, "I was lying to preserve the timeline," becomes a narratively and emotionally unsatisfying retcon. Basically just because the scene with that retcon in place is far less enjoyable than the scene without it in place.
Ultimately, if the Doctor had just bloody died, it would have been all right. I mean, I'd've had some issues, been a bit disappointed River wasn't anything like as awesome as the last season and not been able to think too much about the logic of the thing, but it would have been okay.
It's weird. The more I thought about the season five finale, the more sense it made and the more satisfying it was. The more I think about the season six finale, the less sense it makes and the less satisfying it is. So I think I'm gonna stop thinking about it that much.
The acting, at least, was lovely! :)
5. I LOST MY JOB. LOLS. Well, not lols, actually it kind of sucks, but there you go. I'm employed til the end of the month, then I'm going on holiday for a few weeks which I'd already booked so, you know, I'm just gonna go. It was kind of not totally shocking but I did think I had a good chance of at least holding on until the new year. ALAS. I'm kind of annoyed because due to work shenanigans, they issued my redundancy notice three weeks earlier than they had to, legally, and it's going to screw me out of two weeks of redundancy pay I could claim in lieu of notice from the National Insurance Fund, and we asked them not to do it this way, but they did anyway. So now everyone's pretty irked. Whatever, on the plus side I may qualify for some money to do some professional training courses to help me find another job, so I might finally get a certificate or something to PROVE I can audio type faster than monkeys eat nuts.
OH THE ECONOMY.
I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO UNSEE IT. I love Tom Waits, but from now on, it will always be Cookie Monster singing.
(Random sidenote, I got a Cookie Monster hand puppet for Christmas when I was about three, it had a hole in the back of the throat so you could make it eat the cookies it came with, and one of my earliest memories is TOTAL CONFUSION when my Dad did that. WHERE DID IT GO? I KNOW THAT'S A PUPPET!)
2. I've been enjoying the DC relaunch but I'm really sad that there's no Marvel family, especially that they're not using the chance to fix that crap they did to Mary Marvel way back when. Anyway, I was also thinking that I miss Stephanie Brown, and thus, I have come up with the BEST TEAMUP COMIC EVER. Seriously if I could draw for shit I would totally draw fake covers, but I can't, so whatever. But there should totally be a comic called: SHAZAM & the Power of Spoiler! (With an exclamation mark - that is a very important part of the title).
It would be set in High School and Billy Batson would be a freshman and Stephanie Brown would be a senior and in their civilian identities, Steph would look after Billy and defend him from bullies but in their superhero identities, Spoiler sidekicks to Captain Marvel. I think the power dynamic switch up would be interesting, especially since the best part of Captain Marvel (my preference is for the version where he actually becomes an adult with the Wisdom of Solomon rather than the version where he sort of shares his body with another consciousness) is the part where he's simultaneously a kid and incredibly wise as an adult, then goes back to being a kid again.
I think that in their human identities, Steph has succeeded in putting her father away, but before she put a stop to his supervillainy, her mother got kidnapped and not even Batman can find her, so Steph's trying to find her on her own, but the trail has gone cold. Meanwhile, she took Billy in off the street, per his origin story and together they use "Captain Marvel" to fake out Family Services that they're living with their Uncle who's a Private Investigator, which is how they make their cash, except they're bad at it because they keep telling their clients not to worry about the charge, or realising that their clients are kinda sleazy and turning them in to the police, all the while patrolling Gotham (much to Batman's fury; he would totally try to convince Captain Marvel that Stephanie Brown was unsuitable sidekick material, and Captain Marvel would be all, "Don't be stupid she
IT WOULD BE SUPER AMAZING AND YOU ALL KNOW IT.
3. I have really been enjoying the last few episodes of Fringe, and I am really not looking forward to Peter coming back. I don't want to dislike him, I really, really don't. But all the interesting stuff is Olivias and Walters and Peter is the catalyst for so much of it but only ever makes me annoyed when they try to actually include him. I think I may get one more episode max before he comes back, so I will do my best to enjoy tonight's story and hope it has more BAMFlivia action. I really enjoy watching the two of them interact. And Walter is back to being heartbreakingly unstable instead of bordering on functioning enough we can start to hate him again.
4. Oh, Doctor Who. I don't hate you or anything, I'm just sad you weren't more awesome. I was kind of slowly getting on board with the whole Melody Pond thing too but the ending is...well a cop-out really. I know people said that about the last one, and I disagreed vehemently because it was emotionally true. And that's the problem, this one doesn't feel emotionally true. I could overlook the weirdness of River needing to be part Time Lord or needing to be in a suit that was automated or the fact that I kind of figured the Silence stole River as a child from Kovarian and then forced humans to build them a space suit to care for her because they couldn't without frying her brain, but needed humans to do it because they were socially parasitic (as opposed to having sophisticated servants like Kovarian who have spaceships and futuretech) - that Kovarian wanted a brainwashed soldier to defend against the doctor, who was then stolen by ANOTHER faction hell-bent on killing him - *deep breath* - I could even overlook the fact that the Doctor tells River that she won't remember his murder as a brilliant sop to the "why was River lying SO WELL in the season opener" only to have it made clear that she does, in fact, remember that she DID remember during the final scene with Amy.
I could overlook all that stuff if I just felt the emotions were real. But she doesn't really kill him. And she doesn't believe she did either. The show promises us he'll die and he doesn't. Of course he was never really going to, but a timey wimey remembered from the beyond paradoxy recreation of mythicism would have been just as much a plot cheat but not an emotional one. The Doctor has to be in the Tesselecta most of the episode. Why does he make a big deal of not having to face his death alone? He knows he's not going to die. To convince Amy and Rory he's dead? To what purpose, they've already stopped traveling with him. Why does River agree to spend the rest of her life in prison for a crime she didn't actually commit? If she HAD killed him, even with the best reasons in the world, I totally buy her staying there. But this way? It's just...unfair in a way that's unsatisfying.
So many moments that were powerful before - to pick one off the top of my head - "Octavian says you killed a man." "Yes I did." "A good man." "A very good man." The way those lines are delivered, with sudden solemnity and regret but no apology, it's fascinating. Now we know she's lying, well, fine, but 1) why strike that tone rather than avoidance or the playful note she hits a moment later, that's just promising the audience a moment that never gets delivered, and 2) more importantly, at a certain point, "I was lying to preserve the timeline," becomes a narratively and emotionally unsatisfying retcon. Basically just because the scene with that retcon in place is far less enjoyable than the scene without it in place.
Ultimately, if the Doctor had just bloody died, it would have been all right. I mean, I'd've had some issues, been a bit disappointed River wasn't anything like as awesome as the last season and not been able to think too much about the logic of the thing, but it would have been okay.
It's weird. The more I thought about the season five finale, the more sense it made and the more satisfying it was. The more I think about the season six finale, the less sense it makes and the less satisfying it is. So I think I'm gonna stop thinking about it that much.
The acting, at least, was lovely! :)
5. I LOST MY JOB. LOLS. Well, not lols, actually it kind of sucks, but there you go. I'm employed til the end of the month, then I'm going on holiday for a few weeks which I'd already booked so, you know, I'm just gonna go. It was kind of not totally shocking but I did think I had a good chance of at least holding on until the new year. ALAS. I'm kind of annoyed because due to work shenanigans, they issued my redundancy notice three weeks earlier than they had to, legally, and it's going to screw me out of two weeks of redundancy pay I could claim in lieu of notice from the National Insurance Fund, and we asked them not to do it this way, but they did anyway. So now everyone's pretty irked. Whatever, on the plus side I may qualify for some money to do some professional training courses to help me find another job, so I might finally get a certificate or something to PROVE I can audio type faster than monkeys eat nuts.
OH THE ECONOMY.
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-07 08:14 pm (UTC)Sympathies about the job though, uber suckage. :(
*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 03:51 pm (UTC)Thanks for the sympathies on the job. It does suck rather a lot, but I'm trying to focus on all those days when I hated it and didn't want to go in in the morning. ;)
Now I just have to hope that the NI Fund pays out and that I'm right about the scheme that will give me £1500 to do some training because then maybe I can get the qualifications to get a better job (audio typing related - I'm good at it, but no qualifications to prove that).
*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 04:07 pm (UTC)The myth of the infallability of The Moff has been shattered.
And it turned out that the ongoing storyline stuff this season was all very highly Meh. And the best bits were a couple of the stand-alones.
There were some right shockers though this season. Some really truly horrible episodes.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-07 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 03:55 pm (UTC)Yeah, that sort of what I meant about the finale when I said that I just can't think about it without it all falling apart? And unfortunately I have a brain that cannot stop picking things apart. It's like a puppy with a chew toy! But I appreciate that there's the barmy fun aspect to the whole thing.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 02:48 am (UTC)And sometimes there are double Olivias! *squees* Every ep without Peter is so much better and the women rock. I could just say that every week. I don't care about the plot if it could just be this. :-)
I am sorry about your job but glad you are getting a holiday. You totally deserve a break!
no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 08:28 pm (UTC)Yeah the job thing sucks, but I agree, it's nice to be getting a holiday. And at least I'll be staying with friends and family so I won't be paying for a hotel or anything. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 06:52 am (UTC)I'm still not sure about what River remembers, and yeah, that's a stumbling block, but here's my take on a couple of things:
1) On her killing not the Doctor - she did. In Let's Kill Hitler, she did, and while she 'fixed' that, I can completely see her having a shit ton of guilt about it. Just like Amy has guilt about killing Madam K in a whole other timeline that didn't stick. The intent to kill was still there. That's part of why she was so childishly stubborn in the finale I think. She'd given so much up to fix that wrong act and for what? To be used again, because of Madam K's spite. And I think that was part if not all of the reason she was forced into the suit. Madam K was offended her creation tried to assert her own will.
2) The not dying alone thing. When the Doctor handed the messages over the Tesselacta, he didn't have a plan. He was accepting his death, I think, and he was honestly reporting to Churchhill what he was thinking when he handed over the envelopes. I gathered he came up with the way out only after that extra bit of help was offered by the captain. And then he goes forward with the messages because well, he knows they have to be sent to complete the loop.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 08:45 pm (UTC)1) Yeah, I definitely get that that is going to be a point that River has a lot of feelings about and a lot of guilt. That said, she makes it up to him and saves him in a way that is pretty spectacularly selfless and involves her giving up all her future lives in exchange for his, and she then goes on to live her life, get her PhD, etc., without any kind of urge to hand herself in and serve life for his death. That's the stumbling block for me - not so much the guilt at having "killed" him (which I grant, we could assign her lines in the Angels episodes to recalling their first encounter, not Lake Silencio, though I still think it feels slightly off, it's less so), but the way she's then happy to spend potentially the rest of her life in prison for a crime she didn't commit. I know she breaks out whenever she likes, and I love that, but I always kind of felt she stayed out of some obligation to at least partially do things "by the rules". I guess we'll eventually find out the truth behind her promise to stay in jail - as referenced in the season opener, but as things stand, that's what bugs me. River ends up losing all her future regenerations and potentially most of her current life to prison, for a crime she didn't commit and it feels weird to retcon her amenity to prison as atonement to the Let's Kill Hitler death because, well, that was years ago from her perspective. I guess what I'm saying is, I accept everything you're talking about, right down to her insistence on trying to save the Doctor on this occasion, but unfortunately, it doesn't address why I feel it's so weird she's happy to then be shipped off to Stormcage. There's something awesome about her serving time for a crime she genuinely committed and feels culpable for in this madcap fashion, but without further explication, in the current circumstances, it just feels off. It feels wrong of the Doctor to leave her there.
3) I agree that you're right he came up with the plan after meeting the Tesselecta. But again, that's very early in the episode, and even if he's forced to invite the Ponds to complete the loop, all the stuff in the Alternate Universe, when it's supposed to be deep and angsty and meaningful - when he's marrying River in order to convince her to kill him - all that feels hollow emotionally because he's lying to them and knows it's not real. He spends the vast majority of the episode as the Tesselecta and rewatching most of the emotional scenes with that in mind diminishes rather than improves them.
And I guess that's the core of it. It's not that you can't explain it, it's not that it's the suckiest thing that ever came on my telly (hell, I still prefer season six of Doctor who to most of RTD's run), it's not that further stories might not make it cooler in retrospect, it's that at the moment, rewatching knowing the ending makes everything...less awesome not more awesome. Too many instances of people lying during moments that were better when they were sincere. That kind of thing. It's why I say it's when I think about it too much that it starts to unravel.
Either way I hope that makes sense and thank you for taking the time to give your thoughts. :)
Heyyyyyy
Date: 2012-02-09 12:27 pm (UTC)Oh, also, your crossover idea here sounds absolutely fascinating, even though I don't even know the characters. But yeah, the dynamic sounds great.
Also, I'm with you on the DW finale.
And I still need to get into Fringe. Hm.