why then I believe in all of them.
May. 2nd, 2012 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
damkiannaAll caught up on Korra, and waiting impatiently for another Saturday. No particular commentary yet, except for how terrible I am at handling fannish feelings in realtime. WHY CAN'T I WATCH THE WHOLE SEASON AT ONCE. OH RIGHT IT DOESN'T EXIST YET. DDDDDDDDDD: I need more to happen, I can't stand getting 22 minutes a week. **sob** Although how much do I love Asami and her moped? THIS MUCH. I'm bummed that they seem to be using her for something of a jealousy subplot at the moment, but in my head she and Korra are already BFFs who take moped rides through the city and braid each other's hair and make out sometimes. \o/
And, of course, there was OUaT! I am not sure how to categorize my feelings!
On the one hand: I did like the Pinocchio backstory, I actually think it's about as good an explanation as they could have come up with for how August can enter and leave Storybrooke (because he was also protected from the curse), and it soothes my fear that he was going to be Super Special Magic Writer Guy and they were going to cut Emma time for him or something. I ... am not sure why Emma starting to break the curse is turning him into wood? Unless she's letting some magic "in", and it can tell he didn't keep his promise? idk. But anyway! I looooooooove Regina and Mary Margaret and their whole mostly-hate cross-universe relationship thing, and some of Mary Margaret's dialogue made me grimace but the point of her little speech was right on and amazing. And I actually think I am pleased by Emma's fear - possibly you can tell if you happen to have glanced over ItO, but I adore uncertain heroes, I love it when people think they can't handle things or are terrified of trying to, possibly because that is how I feel almost all the time (why hello there anxiety). I also think it hints that she is starting to believe, despite August's disappointment, because if she didn't think the responsibility he was placing on her could ever be real, there ... wouldn't have been anything to be frightened of.
On the other hand: I am really really really leery of this custody plotline. D: REALLY leery. Partly because it apparently makes Emma do stupid things - taking Henry is SUCH A TERRIBLE IDEA, I cannot even articulate - and also a lot because it's so reductive! :P Because of the context, it's very hard for the show to avoid conflating biology and morality to some degree, and that is uncomfortable to me in a zillion ways. And I don't really want Regina defeated; I want her to decide she doesn't need to keep twisting herself up with hate, or making everyone else unhappy, or, you know, yanking people's hearts out and keeping them in boxes. I don't really want her to lose Henry, or the tangled-up we've-both-tried-to-kill-each-other mother-daughter thing with Snow/Mary Margaret, or anything. I am a fluffy bunny, perhaps; but part of the reason I liked Mary Margaret's speech was because I love forgiveness. I am fascinated by stories to do with forgiveness - with wanting it, granting it, meaning it, trying to mean it but not quite being able to, the things it fixes and the things it can't fix. (See: Xena. Aaaaaaall of Xena.) And I want to get a forgiveness story out of this, but I have no idea whether I'm going to get one; the more they let loose with Henry's antipathy, the more nervous I am that they won't bother. On US TV, it's usually hard to recover from being strongly disliked by a child character, unless it's a) about a non-demonstrative character learning to be more comfortable with children, b) supposed to be funny, or c) the kid's a Creepy Child Sociopath anyway.
Also: I wish they'd show us the Blue Fairy as a nun in Maineverse and give her some stuff to do, so that the only times we ever see her would not be in that horrendous dress, spouting terrible storyverse dialogue.
I'm not sure why, but I finished A Great and Terrible Beauty. Can't say I think it managed to improve. I think the fundamental problem is that Gemma and her friends are not actually all that likeable, in the end - I mean, as people, they do actually gain some degree of complexity, even though the exposition that accomplishes that felt kind of hamhanded. But as heroines, they're ... sort of terrible. Gemma talks about her friends resenting the fact that she controls all access to the realms of magic like that's not completely and utterly reasonable - like any truly virtuous person would ~understand that she, as The Chosen One, has been clearly selected by the universe as the only one worthy of the honor. And yet she is actually not at all deserving. The realms are superfine as they are; it's the girls fucking around with them that causes all the problems and kills Pippa, and if there's anything I loathe more in a protagonist than the inability to follow very simple instructions given by people who know more than they do, I can't think of it off the top of my head. If somebody who's been living in the goddamn realms and was the last person with your amazing powers says not to touch the ancient runes, DON'T FUCKING TOUCH THEM. (I can handle this if there's a compelling reason; but "I really want to" doesn't qualify to me as anything but selfish, not if there's the stability of worlds at stake.)
It's like that one scene in the Fantastic Four movie where the gang manages to keep a firetruck or whatever from falling off a huge bridge - which it was falling off of because of an accident they caused in the first place. Like, sorry, but I can't really buy that you're a hero because you managed to mostly fix a mess YOU CAUSED. And Gemma doesn't even do that! She causes the mess and then runs away, and sure, she says she feels bad about leaving Pippa to drown, but I would have expected her to be absolutely wracked with remorse and guilt and grief, and that did not come through for me at all. (Which may echo back to my complaint the first time through about the writing style; I'd rather not assert that it's bad based solely on my personal taste, but it doesn't resonate with me emotionally for shit.) I also didn't find the climactic sort-of-a-battle very engaging; it seemed like it was written very vaguely, with lots of slinging around of "the magic" and not a lot of concrete details about what that meant or looked like or felt like. And there was more failure to follow instructions, and also some bloody carnage that came out of nowhere and was way creepier than the narrative that followed seemed to give it credit for. I would almost believe that Gemma forgot entirely that she watched her "friends" strip and then beat a deer to death with a rock, because she doesn't mention it ever again, or feel any lingering revulsion toward them after the whole thing's over with, or anything; it's just there to be bloody and shocking, and when it's done doing that it might as well never have happened at all. BLARGH.
And nothing about the portrayal of Kartik or of Walking People improves at all. The existence of the Rakshana as an order is put into historical context with ... Charlemagne. Charlemagne. And it's not Gemma talking, so it's not a clueless white girl thing; the most generous interpretation I can think of is that Kartik was trying to be helpful by using stuff he thought Gemma might have heard of, instead of a more natural and more extensive set of references that would, you know, actually have anything to do with South Asia. The horrific backstory crime turns out to have been the sacrificial murder of a young Rroma girl for the sake of ~power, which is awful in a couple ways - the least of which is that the young woman who committed it is of the Azula/Alia mold, driven to madness and atrocity by her inability to handle power and her struggles to obtain more of it. I guess it's possible that Bray was going for an inversion - the pretty young white women are the ones luring a Rroma child away, in opposition to the traditional stereotype - but there's way too much fail in here to pull that off.
I would have about a zillion fewer complaints, I think, if - well, I mean, if this book were less awful, but also if Ann were the main character. Gemma is not-pretty in that way that YA heroines so often are, enough to think of herself as not pretty, but not enough that she's actually not pretty; she is also fairly well-off, while Ann is poor and Gemma knows it. She doesn't do anything about it, except think every now and then about how hard that probably is for Ann, which makes her asides about Ann's situation seem stilted and forced. By contrast to Gemma's Gemmaness, Ann is described fairly often as plain; somewhat overweight; an orphan; generally disdained. If she were the main character and the one in whom great cosmic power resided, it would make a much better foundation for that secret power serving as a fuck-you to The System. (As it is, it's an intersectionality-free gosh-it's-tough-to-be-a-rich-white-woman eyeroll fest - not that misogyny is not real to or does not affect Gemma daily, but the story feels incredibly blinkered when that's the only axis of oppression that gets any real sustained focus.) It would also help a lot with the friendship issues - Gemma really doesn't have much reason to have tension with Felicity and Pippa, she's almost exactly like them except that she happens to notice when they're being horrid, by authorial fiat. But there would absolutely be tension to be mined if Ann were the only one who could open the door - if the other girls began by using her to get to the realms, and she knew it, and they learned about each other and started becoming actual friends except none of them could ever quite forget how they started - I mean, if you want to write a book about four girls who are companions and slow-blooming friends but can't always precisely like each other, that's a pretty golden premise. And it would make the difference in Ann's background something more than something Gemma remembers occasionally when it's time for her to seem like less of a dick than Felicity or Pippa. That got super long! Point is: still not a rec. Bleh.
Re: movies, Johnny Depp as Tonto and Benedict Cumberbatch as (or so it is rumored, I hear) Khan - Khan Noonien Singh, for crying out loud - force me to say unto Hollywood: what the fuck even are you doing. Just stop.
I got an attack of the spams today; it was on like the oldest entry in this entire journal, but in case they switch targets, sorry for any garbled URLs-and-porn that pops up in here! I'll do my best to clear it out quickly.
And, of course, there was OUaT! I am not sure how to categorize my feelings!
On the one hand: I did like the Pinocchio backstory, I actually think it's about as good an explanation as they could have come up with for how August can enter and leave Storybrooke (because he was also protected from the curse), and it soothes my fear that he was going to be Super Special Magic Writer Guy and they were going to cut Emma time for him or something. I ... am not sure why Emma starting to break the curse is turning him into wood? Unless she's letting some magic "in", and it can tell he didn't keep his promise? idk. But anyway! I looooooooove Regina and Mary Margaret and their whole mostly-hate cross-universe relationship thing, and some of Mary Margaret's dialogue made me grimace but the point of her little speech was right on and amazing. And I actually think I am pleased by Emma's fear - possibly you can tell if you happen to have glanced over ItO, but I adore uncertain heroes, I love it when people think they can't handle things or are terrified of trying to, possibly because that is how I feel almost all the time (why hello there anxiety). I also think it hints that she is starting to believe, despite August's disappointment, because if she didn't think the responsibility he was placing on her could ever be real, there ... wouldn't have been anything to be frightened of.
On the other hand: I am really really really leery of this custody plotline. D: REALLY leery. Partly because it apparently makes Emma do stupid things - taking Henry is SUCH A TERRIBLE IDEA, I cannot even articulate - and also a lot because it's so reductive! :P Because of the context, it's very hard for the show to avoid conflating biology and morality to some degree, and that is uncomfortable to me in a zillion ways. And I don't really want Regina defeated; I want her to decide she doesn't need to keep twisting herself up with hate, or making everyone else unhappy, or, you know, yanking people's hearts out and keeping them in boxes. I don't really want her to lose Henry, or the tangled-up we've-both-tried-to-kill-each-other mother-daughter thing with Snow/Mary Margaret, or anything. I am a fluffy bunny, perhaps; but part of the reason I liked Mary Margaret's speech was because I love forgiveness. I am fascinated by stories to do with forgiveness - with wanting it, granting it, meaning it, trying to mean it but not quite being able to, the things it fixes and the things it can't fix. (See: Xena. Aaaaaaall of Xena.) And I want to get a forgiveness story out of this, but I have no idea whether I'm going to get one; the more they let loose with Henry's antipathy, the more nervous I am that they won't bother. On US TV, it's usually hard to recover from being strongly disliked by a child character, unless it's a) about a non-demonstrative character learning to be more comfortable with children, b) supposed to be funny, or c) the kid's a Creepy Child Sociopath anyway.
Also: I wish they'd show us the Blue Fairy as a nun in Maineverse and give her some stuff to do, so that the only times we ever see her would not be in that horrendous dress, spouting terrible storyverse dialogue.
I'm not sure why, but I finished A Great and Terrible Beauty. Can't say I think it managed to improve. I think the fundamental problem is that Gemma and her friends are not actually all that likeable, in the end - I mean, as people, they do actually gain some degree of complexity, even though the exposition that accomplishes that felt kind of hamhanded. But as heroines, they're ... sort of terrible. Gemma talks about her friends resenting the fact that she controls all access to the realms of magic like that's not completely and utterly reasonable - like any truly virtuous person would ~understand that she, as The Chosen One, has been clearly selected by the universe as the only one worthy of the honor. And yet she is actually not at all deserving. The realms are superfine as they are; it's the girls fucking around with them that causes all the problems and kills Pippa, and if there's anything I loathe more in a protagonist than the inability to follow very simple instructions given by people who know more than they do, I can't think of it off the top of my head. If somebody who's been living in the goddamn realms and was the last person with your amazing powers says not to touch the ancient runes, DON'T FUCKING TOUCH THEM. (I can handle this if there's a compelling reason; but "I really want to" doesn't qualify to me as anything but selfish, not if there's the stability of worlds at stake.)
It's like that one scene in the Fantastic Four movie where the gang manages to keep a firetruck or whatever from falling off a huge bridge - which it was falling off of because of an accident they caused in the first place. Like, sorry, but I can't really buy that you're a hero because you managed to mostly fix a mess YOU CAUSED. And Gemma doesn't even do that! She causes the mess and then runs away, and sure, she says she feels bad about leaving Pippa to drown, but I would have expected her to be absolutely wracked with remorse and guilt and grief, and that did not come through for me at all. (Which may echo back to my complaint the first time through about the writing style; I'd rather not assert that it's bad based solely on my personal taste, but it doesn't resonate with me emotionally for shit.) I also didn't find the climactic sort-of-a-battle very engaging; it seemed like it was written very vaguely, with lots of slinging around of "the magic" and not a lot of concrete details about what that meant or looked like or felt like. And there was more failure to follow instructions, and also some bloody carnage that came out of nowhere and was way creepier than the narrative that followed seemed to give it credit for. I would almost believe that Gemma forgot entirely that she watched her "friends" strip and then beat a deer to death with a rock, because she doesn't mention it ever again, or feel any lingering revulsion toward them after the whole thing's over with, or anything; it's just there to be bloody and shocking, and when it's done doing that it might as well never have happened at all. BLARGH.
And nothing about the portrayal of Kartik or of Walking People improves at all. The existence of the Rakshana as an order is put into historical context with ... Charlemagne. Charlemagne. And it's not Gemma talking, so it's not a clueless white girl thing; the most generous interpretation I can think of is that Kartik was trying to be helpful by using stuff he thought Gemma might have heard of, instead of a more natural and more extensive set of references that would, you know, actually have anything to do with South Asia. The horrific backstory crime turns out to have been the sacrificial murder of a young Rroma girl for the sake of ~power, which is awful in a couple ways - the least of which is that the young woman who committed it is of the Azula/Alia mold, driven to madness and atrocity by her inability to handle power and her struggles to obtain more of it. I guess it's possible that Bray was going for an inversion - the pretty young white women are the ones luring a Rroma child away, in opposition to the traditional stereotype - but there's way too much fail in here to pull that off.
I would have about a zillion fewer complaints, I think, if - well, I mean, if this book were less awful, but also if Ann were the main character. Gemma is not-pretty in that way that YA heroines so often are, enough to think of herself as not pretty, but not enough that she's actually not pretty; she is also fairly well-off, while Ann is poor and Gemma knows it. She doesn't do anything about it, except think every now and then about how hard that probably is for Ann, which makes her asides about Ann's situation seem stilted and forced. By contrast to Gemma's Gemmaness, Ann is described fairly often as plain; somewhat overweight; an orphan; generally disdained. If she were the main character and the one in whom great cosmic power resided, it would make a much better foundation for that secret power serving as a fuck-you to The System. (As it is, it's an intersectionality-free gosh-it's-tough-to-be-a-rich-white-woman eyeroll fest - not that misogyny is not real to or does not affect Gemma daily, but the story feels incredibly blinkered when that's the only axis of oppression that gets any real sustained focus.) It would also help a lot with the friendship issues - Gemma really doesn't have much reason to have tension with Felicity and Pippa, she's almost exactly like them except that she happens to notice when they're being horrid, by authorial fiat. But there would absolutely be tension to be mined if Ann were the only one who could open the door - if the other girls began by using her to get to the realms, and she knew it, and they learned about each other and started becoming actual friends except none of them could ever quite forget how they started - I mean, if you want to write a book about four girls who are companions and slow-blooming friends but can't always precisely like each other, that's a pretty golden premise. And it would make the difference in Ann's background something more than something Gemma remembers occasionally when it's time for her to seem like less of a dick than Felicity or Pippa. That got super long! Point is: still not a rec. Bleh.
Re: movies, Johnny Depp as Tonto and Benedict Cumberbatch as (or so it is rumored, I hear) Khan - Khan Noonien Singh, for crying out loud - force me to say unto Hollywood: what the fuck even are you doing. Just stop.
I got an attack of the spams today; it was on like the oldest entry in this entire journal, but in case they switch targets, sorry for any garbled URLs-and-porn that pops up in here! I'll do my best to clear it out quickly.
