behind you in line in hell forever.
Oct. 26th, 2010 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
damkiannaI am SO TIRED of coughing, ugh. :P
But! It's Tuesday.
I think I might actually be getting less interested in this show as time goes by, though it certainly is hard to tell. I'm glad they haven't dumped Girlfriend back into peril again, but I am getting incredibly sick of all the ~MYSTERY~ bullshit. I get that it was shocking for Not!Kevin and Girlfriend to learn that the Inostranka detainees were aliens, but I feel like we the viewers have known that for at least an episode or two, so treating it like some kind of giant reveal felt a little silly to me. (The second they started talking about "what they can do" in the pilot, the only real options were aliens or humans-with-weird-powers, so.) The actual mystery is what the hell any of these people are thinking, because one wacky thing after another keeps happening, and yet we still don't know what any of these people's motivations are.
It feels to me like they've got a bulletin board covered in postits with kinds of crises written on them, and they close their eyes and pick three for each episode. Airplane hijacking! Kidnapping! Plague! Hostage negotiation! Building collapse! And they just keep rolling from one to the next, without pausing long enough to give me any reason to feel invested. I have no idea what most of the principal characters think they're doing, or why they think they're doing it. Not in any sense more complicated than "Evil advisor to the president is evil!", anyway. Mommy's still enjoying it, of course. And, hey, maybe if I get to the end of the season, I'll have enough information to draft an FBI Lady/Assassin Lady AU. :D
Kevin Sorbo! It's been so long! I got distracted in the middle of this episode by Br needing help to finish a paper, so I missed a lot of the heavy stuff - but not Kono kicking that motorcyclist in the head, for which I am deeply grateful. But I really need to watch it again; I remember only bits and pieces of, you know, the actual plot. I loved Kono and Danny sharing that little moment of empathy over awesome teachers who change your life, and the ash-scattering scene at the end was beautiful - okay, they lingered on it for a while, but the overhead shots of that circle of surfboards were lovely, and putting the ashes in the water was a sweet way to close the episode. Any deep thoughts'll have to wait until I rewatch it.
And I also remembered today that I never actually posted anything about the season finale of Warehouse 13. Mostly because it made me very unhappy.
I think the big problem with it was that, at least to me, there wasn't any buildup to HG's moral backtracking. Granted, I am not unbiased here, because I have a mad crush on HG; but I feel like there were definite opportunities to hint that HG was dismayed and disgusted by the future she'd hoped would be utopian, and they ... didn't use any of them. So her final big evil expository meltdown came from way out of left field. Plus, it made Artie right about HG, even though he had no reason to think she was evil back then, which rubs me the wrong way - he was made right by authorial fiat, not because he had actually figured out something that led him to a reasonable conclusion. Not on.
I'll admit that I wasn't sure she would stick around, even though I was really hoping we'd split off into a Pete-and-Myka team and a Claudia-and-HG team; but that just wasn't a good way to remove her. Also, not a good way to get rid of Not!Badger/Regent Guy - there was no reason for him to die then except to make Mrs. Frederick and her Creepy Egyptian Mumbling right. :P If there had been an actual only-two-may-pass situation, and HG had been sacrificed then ... well. I wouldn't have been pleased, but it wouldn't have been lemon juice on the paper cut, either.
Also, the Warehouse bonding stuff was totally weird. I'll buy some kind of vaguely computer-y brain connection between keepers and Warehouses, it's not a bad thing for a keeper to have a Warehouse's status always in the back of their mind; but the way they chose to do it was really weird. A active Warehouse without a keeper can just force a bond with another keeper? The bond is formed by tying a ribbon around your hands? There's a machine built just for the purpose of monitoring this one-keeper-two-Warehouse situation even though I thought it had never happened before, and it presents its results in the form of a moon graphic being eclipsed? Seriously?
I mean, I loved having Mrs. F around, and I adore Claudia beyond all reason; I thought Vet Girlfriend had a very realistic reaction to being forced into temporary homicidal insanity, even if I didn't buy the setup. And I have to admit that HG's final big evil plan being derailed by the thought that she'd have to kill Myka if she wanted to cleanse the world gave my sad broken heart a moment of great glee. I do want to keep watching, if only to see how they get Myka back and watch Claudia be awesome. Mostly, though, I want to write an AU season where HG becomes the keeper for Warehouse 2 and runs it with her own teamand Myka comes along to help and they fall in love and live happily ever after.
... Ahem.
And as long as I'm working the giant wall of text thing, here, I read Uglies, and the sequel, Pretties.
Uglies, I liked reasonably well. Not my favorite book of all time, but not half bad. The pacing felt a little bit off to me, and it seemed like there was a larger point about what it means to be yourself, warts and all - whether it's worth it to let yourself be made beautiful if it means losing some of the things that make you individual - that got lost when the added "oh, and also they give you brain damage" conspiracy got hooked on. The choice that Shay was trying to make about sticking to her own face or going for a faked-up one somebody else would put on her turned a lot less complicated (and to me, less interesting) when it became a choice between sticking to her own face or having chunks of her brain cut out. :P And I got so incredibly tired of the uninventive naming scheme - "Uglyville"? "New Pretty Town"? Really? I also thought Tally was kind of an idiot at times; the second she threw the locket in the fire, I knew what would happen, and I was screaming for her to just hide it, or bury it (it would at least have taken longer to go off, that way).
But I liked the hoverboarding sequences; I loved Shay; and I did like the time Tally spent with the Smokies, even though I think the pacing issues made it suffer. (Her falling in love with David felt like it took about five minutes, and her adjustment to working hard all day long and living off the land didn't feel very realistic to me.) I loved her escape from Special Circumstances, too, and the shoes. And I was glad that she was willing to own up to the mistakes she'd made, and that she was going to try to fix them.
Pretties, on the other hand, I find myself not caring much for. In more cosmetic terms, the pacing problems were still there, and the made-up slang, which only bugged me a bit in Uglies, was EVERYWHERE in Pretties. I realize that this was partly because Tally was brain-damaged for most of it, but my god. By the time I finished it, I was so sick of seeing the word "bubbly" I was ready to fork my eyes out.
But I also had problems with more integral aspects of it. I was ready for this to be the book where Tally started fixing things - we ended the last one with Shay gone pretty, the Smokies fleeing Special Circumstances, David and Tally broken up temporarily because of her accidental betrayal, and Tally being taken back, about to end up in the same situation as Shay. This one was, I had hoped, going to be about getting out of all that, so that the next ones could be about their big revolution.
Instead, it ended exactly the same way, except everything was an order of magnitude worse: Shay gone not just pretty but Special, the New Smokies fleeing Special Circumstances, David and Tally broken up very abruptly because of the accidental betrayal of the boy Tally fell in love with this book (who wasn't even around last book!), and Tally being taken back, about to end up in the same situation as Shay. $#%@! Come on!
And everything in between, I found weird and confusing, annoying, or both at once. Zane came out of nowhere, and that whole long sequence where they macked to keep themselves "bubbly" struck me as really odd and sudden. The whole interlude with Andrew and the feuding people who thought Tally was a god was flat-out bizarre. And the reveal at the end about the cure she and Zane thought they were splitting was just silly - am I really supposed to believe that Tally WILLPOWERED her way out of BRAIN DAMAGE? WHAT.
If Pretties had been about Tally fixing all the problems from the first book, then the pattern I thought Uglies was establishing, of Tally taking responsibility for herself and for her mistakes, would've been carried through. Instead, I feel like I just finished two books' worth of Tally going, "Oops! I just made a huge mistake! Okay, well, I didn't mean to do it, and I realize now that it's srs bizness, and I'll do the best I can to take care of it once I do this one other - oops! I just made a huge mistake!" And Shay was the character I was the most interested in, which made this book one big thumb in my eye - Tally pissed her off again, and then there were, like, two pages about how she started a self-harm cult in her efforts to willpower her way out of brain damage just like Tally, and then she shows up at the end and they've made her a Special. D: So, not my favorite.
Thank god for cuts, or I would feel so guilty about posting these rambles.
And Imagine the Ocean broke 500 views on A03! \o/
But! It's Tuesday.
I think I might actually be getting less interested in this show as time goes by, though it certainly is hard to tell. I'm glad they haven't dumped Girlfriend back into peril again, but I am getting incredibly sick of all the ~MYSTERY~ bullshit. I get that it was shocking for Not!Kevin and Girlfriend to learn that the Inostranka detainees were aliens, but I feel like we the viewers have known that for at least an episode or two, so treating it like some kind of giant reveal felt a little silly to me. (The second they started talking about "what they can do" in the pilot, the only real options were aliens or humans-with-weird-powers, so.) The actual mystery is what the hell any of these people are thinking, because one wacky thing after another keeps happening, and yet we still don't know what any of these people's motivations are.
It feels to me like they've got a bulletin board covered in postits with kinds of crises written on them, and they close their eyes and pick three for each episode. Airplane hijacking! Kidnapping! Plague! Hostage negotiation! Building collapse! And they just keep rolling from one to the next, without pausing long enough to give me any reason to feel invested. I have no idea what most of the principal characters think they're doing, or why they think they're doing it. Not in any sense more complicated than "Evil advisor to the president is evil!", anyway. Mommy's still enjoying it, of course. And, hey, maybe if I get to the end of the season, I'll have enough information to draft an FBI Lady/Assassin Lady AU. :D
Kevin Sorbo! It's been so long! I got distracted in the middle of this episode by Br needing help to finish a paper, so I missed a lot of the heavy stuff - but not Kono kicking that motorcyclist in the head, for which I am deeply grateful. But I really need to watch it again; I remember only bits and pieces of, you know, the actual plot. I loved Kono and Danny sharing that little moment of empathy over awesome teachers who change your life, and the ash-scattering scene at the end was beautiful - okay, they lingered on it for a while, but the overhead shots of that circle of surfboards were lovely, and putting the ashes in the water was a sweet way to close the episode. Any deep thoughts'll have to wait until I rewatch it.
And I also remembered today that I never actually posted anything about the season finale of Warehouse 13. Mostly because it made me very unhappy.
I think the big problem with it was that, at least to me, there wasn't any buildup to HG's moral backtracking. Granted, I am not unbiased here, because I have a mad crush on HG; but I feel like there were definite opportunities to hint that HG was dismayed and disgusted by the future she'd hoped would be utopian, and they ... didn't use any of them. So her final big evil expository meltdown came from way out of left field. Plus, it made Artie right about HG, even though he had no reason to think she was evil back then, which rubs me the wrong way - he was made right by authorial fiat, not because he had actually figured out something that led him to a reasonable conclusion. Not on.
I'll admit that I wasn't sure she would stick around, even though I was really hoping we'd split off into a Pete-and-Myka team and a Claudia-and-HG team; but that just wasn't a good way to remove her. Also, not a good way to get rid of Not!Badger/Regent Guy - there was no reason for him to die then except to make Mrs. Frederick and her Creepy Egyptian Mumbling right. :P If there had been an actual only-two-may-pass situation, and HG had been sacrificed then ... well. I wouldn't have been pleased, but it wouldn't have been lemon juice on the paper cut, either.
Also, the Warehouse bonding stuff was totally weird. I'll buy some kind of vaguely computer-y brain connection between keepers and Warehouses, it's not a bad thing for a keeper to have a Warehouse's status always in the back of their mind; but the way they chose to do it was really weird. A active Warehouse without a keeper can just force a bond with another keeper? The bond is formed by tying a ribbon around your hands? There's a machine built just for the purpose of monitoring this one-keeper-two-Warehouse situation even though I thought it had never happened before, and it presents its results in the form of a moon graphic being eclipsed? Seriously?
I mean, I loved having Mrs. F around, and I adore Claudia beyond all reason; I thought Vet Girlfriend had a very realistic reaction to being forced into temporary homicidal insanity, even if I didn't buy the setup. And I have to admit that HG's final big evil plan being derailed by the thought that she'd have to kill Myka if she wanted to cleanse the world gave my sad broken heart a moment of great glee. I do want to keep watching, if only to see how they get Myka back and watch Claudia be awesome. Mostly, though, I want to write an AU season where HG becomes the keeper for Warehouse 2 and runs it with her own team
... Ahem.
And as long as I'm working the giant wall of text thing, here, I read Uglies, and the sequel, Pretties.
Uglies, I liked reasonably well. Not my favorite book of all time, but not half bad. The pacing felt a little bit off to me, and it seemed like there was a larger point about what it means to be yourself, warts and all - whether it's worth it to let yourself be made beautiful if it means losing some of the things that make you individual - that got lost when the added "oh, and also they give you brain damage" conspiracy got hooked on. The choice that Shay was trying to make about sticking to her own face or going for a faked-up one somebody else would put on her turned a lot less complicated (and to me, less interesting) when it became a choice between sticking to her own face or having chunks of her brain cut out. :P And I got so incredibly tired of the uninventive naming scheme - "Uglyville"? "New Pretty Town"? Really? I also thought Tally was kind of an idiot at times; the second she threw the locket in the fire, I knew what would happen, and I was screaming for her to just hide it, or bury it (it would at least have taken longer to go off, that way).
But I liked the hoverboarding sequences; I loved Shay; and I did like the time Tally spent with the Smokies, even though I think the pacing issues made it suffer. (Her falling in love with David felt like it took about five minutes, and her adjustment to working hard all day long and living off the land didn't feel very realistic to me.) I loved her escape from Special Circumstances, too, and the shoes. And I was glad that she was willing to own up to the mistakes she'd made, and that she was going to try to fix them.
Pretties, on the other hand, I find myself not caring much for. In more cosmetic terms, the pacing problems were still there, and the made-up slang, which only bugged me a bit in Uglies, was EVERYWHERE in Pretties. I realize that this was partly because Tally was brain-damaged for most of it, but my god. By the time I finished it, I was so sick of seeing the word "bubbly" I was ready to fork my eyes out.
But I also had problems with more integral aspects of it. I was ready for this to be the book where Tally started fixing things - we ended the last one with Shay gone pretty, the Smokies fleeing Special Circumstances, David and Tally broken up temporarily because of her accidental betrayal, and Tally being taken back, about to end up in the same situation as Shay. This one was, I had hoped, going to be about getting out of all that, so that the next ones could be about their big revolution.
Instead, it ended exactly the same way, except everything was an order of magnitude worse: Shay gone not just pretty but Special, the New Smokies fleeing Special Circumstances, David and Tally broken up very abruptly because of the accidental betrayal of the boy Tally fell in love with this book (who wasn't even around last book!), and Tally being taken back, about to end up in the same situation as Shay. $#%@! Come on!
And everything in between, I found weird and confusing, annoying, or both at once. Zane came out of nowhere, and that whole long sequence where they macked to keep themselves "bubbly" struck me as really odd and sudden. The whole interlude with Andrew and the feuding people who thought Tally was a god was flat-out bizarre. And the reveal at the end about the cure she and Zane thought they were splitting was just silly - am I really supposed to believe that Tally WILLPOWERED her way out of BRAIN DAMAGE? WHAT.
If Pretties had been about Tally fixing all the problems from the first book, then the pattern I thought Uglies was establishing, of Tally taking responsibility for herself and for her mistakes, would've been carried through. Instead, I feel like I just finished two books' worth of Tally going, "Oops! I just made a huge mistake! Okay, well, I didn't mean to do it, and I realize now that it's srs bizness, and I'll do the best I can to take care of it once I do this one other - oops! I just made a huge mistake!" And Shay was the character I was the most interested in, which made this book one big thumb in my eye - Tally pissed her off again, and then there were, like, two pages about how she started a self-harm cult in her efforts to willpower her way out of brain damage just like Tally, and then she shows up at the end and they've made her a Special. D: So, not my favorite.
Thank god for cuts, or I would feel so guilty about posting these rambles.
And Imagine the Ocean broke 500 views on A03! \o/
